


"Bucky's Alive."

by JunoSteelOwnsMyHeart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Stucky - Freeform, steve & bucky - Freeform, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-19 15:25:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19359688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunoSteelOwnsMyHeart/pseuds/JunoSteelOwnsMyHeart
Summary: New York happened. The Avengers, somehow, pulled it off. Everyone survived, and hopefully, now, the Earth will be safe.That was the thought, anyway, until Loki escaped.With the Tesseract.So now, with the knowledge that Bucky is alive and SHIELD is compromised (because if Bucky survived, well, so did HYDRA) it's up to the remaining Avengers to deal with the fallout.Banner's removed himself, Tony's sulking, and Thor's off planet, searching for his brother. And to make matters worse, Steve can't focus on anything.Well, he can focus on one thing. Finding Bucky Barnes.So that's what he does.





	1. Chapter 1:

It had been three days. Three days since New York, three days since Loki escaped with the Tesseract, three days since he had fought himself, who had had to have been Loki, right? (But the compass…)

 

It had been three days, and Steve wasn’t sure he had slept since then.  _ Bucky is alive, alive, alive. Bucky is alive.  _ He shook his head, trying to clear his own, echoing voice, from his mind. ( _ Alive _ , the voice whispered.) Across the counter, Nat snapped her fingers. 

 

“You still alive over there?”

 

He raised his eyebrows. They were sitting in Tony’s immaculate kitchen, supposedly eating breakfast. In reality, Nat was cleaning her nails with a knife, her boots propped up on the counter, and Steve was staring into space as his eggs rapidly cooled on the plate in front of him. 

 

Nat shoved a forkful of his cold breakfast into her mouth. “Talk to me, Cap.” 

 

“What about?” 

 

It was her turn to look skeptical. Steve had been trying for a casual, guiltless tone. Judging by her face, he had missed the mark by miles. 

 

“Look, Steve,” she started, “I’m mad Loki got away too. But Stark is gonna be fine, and the big guy calmed down, and Thor’s already got people looking. There’s not much else we can do unless you want to go to space.” 

 

“Loki. Right.” He had almost forgotten that Loki had escaped. He fumbled for a response that would end the conversation. “Yeah,” Steve muttered, “I know. I just wish I hadn’t let him get away. I had him right there and he knocked me out and walked away. It was like he knew exactly what I was going to do before I even knew it. Like he knew exactly how to get to me.” 

 

“God of tricksters ringing any bells?”

 

Steve shrugged. “I guess.” 

 

Before she could respond, Clint’s voice crackled through hidden speakers. “Nat? I could use some help here.”

 

“Are you stuck, again?”

 

There was a long silence. “Maybe?”

 

She cursed under her breath in something that sounded like Russian. “Coming.” 

 

Without another word to Steve, Natasha wandered off, muttering commands to JARVIS as she scolded Clint. Hours later, Steve would find out that he had gotten stuck in the vents between Tony’s lab and an elevator shaft. 

 

For now, though, Clint’s latest predicament wasn’t his concern. 

 

His own words echoed through his mind again.  _ Like he knew what I would do before I did.  _

 

_ He had the compass.  _

 

**_Bucky_ ** _ , _ Other Steve whispered back. 

 

***

“Tony?”

 

Stark hardly looked up as Steve entered the lab. “What’s up, Wonderbread?”

 

He dismissed the strange insult with half a confused glace to Stark, before sitting awkwardly on the edge of a table. “I’ve got a weird question. I guess. You might think I’m crazy.” 

 

“You’re in my lab at one thirty in the morning with a weird maybe-question?”

 

“Shit, is it really that late?”

 

“Language, Miss America.” 

 

Steve ignored him. Took a deep breath. “What do you think about time travel?”

 

“Why? Missing some of your buddies?”

 

Steve raised his eyebrows. In the silence, Tony looked up for the first time. 

 

He dragged a hand down his face, shoving the panel of armor and the thousand intricate wires he had been so absorbed by away as he stood. “You’re serious?”

 

“Look I know it sounds crazy. But when Loki got away, when he fought me, he took the scepter. I’m sure of it. And then it was sitting next to me when I came to. And he had my compass in his pocket. And then there was a sighting of Banner - I mean Hulk- on the wrong side of New York  _ during the fight _ .” 

 

“So you’re saying that the Avengers of the future came back in time during the battle of New York to kick your ass and then disappeared?”   
  


“I have no idea. But Loki - or whoever he was - he knew something… something he shouldn’t have known.”

 

“He tell you your birthday during the fight?”   
  


“Doesn’t matter.” 

 

Tony’s eyebrows flicked up again. “I think it does matter. Why else you be getting all fidgety and… is that a blush I detect, Mr. Rogers?” 

 

“No. Look, he told me something that doesn’t make any sense, and he got away because he distracted me. But Loki couldn’t have known…” 

 

“What?” For once Tony looked sincere. “C’mon, Cap, what’d he say?”

 

“He said that Bucky’s alive.”

 

***

 

“Right so, a couple of days ago, when Loki got away (we’re gonna assume it was, in fact, Loki, because it makes everything  _ so _ much less of a headache), he slipped Mr. Righteous here an interesting tidbit of info.”

 

Nat looked up from her tablet as Tony entered the room. “Hello to you too. Hi, Steve.”

 

He offered a nod of greeting. “Probably-Loki said that Bucky is alive. And we were hoping you could find him.” 

 

“I thought stealing thunder was Thor’s job,” Tony muttered. 

 

“So I’m missing persons now? Who the hell is Bucky?”

 

Tony flicked his wrist at the tablet. “JARVIS?”   
  


“James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. Born March 10th, 1917, eldest of 4 siblings, best friend of Steven Grant Rogers. Drafted during WWII to serve in the 107th, deployed June 1943. Captured October 1943 by HYDRA operatives and rescued the following month by Steven Rogers, now operating as Captain America. Recruited to the Howling Commandos to serve under Capt. America. Assumed dead after falling from a train in during a Howling Commandos mission in January of 1945.” 

 

Bucky’s picture floated above the small screen as the AI spoke, smiling, marching back into camp at the head of the 107th, Steve beside him. Idly, Steve wondered why that was the photo Jarvis chose.  

 

“So why are you coming to me? The guy died in 1945.” 

 

Steve shook his head. “I don't think he did.” 

 

Nat rolled a hand through the air between them, gesturing for him to continue speaking. 

 

“He got injected with Zola’s version of the serum. Meaning, if he had survived, he would have been taken by HYDRA. We knew there were HYDRA sweepers following the train, it’s half the reason we ziplined in. He wasn’t fully enhanced, but we had started to notice…” 

 

“We had noticed?” Tony’s sarcasm had returned in full force. 

 

Slowly, Steve turned towards the glowing picture. “I thought he was stronger than he had been. Faster, too. He could keep up with me. None of the rest of the unit could. Buck said it was nothing. He said… he said that he had to be able to keep up with me so I couldn’t run off an do something stupid without him.” 

 

Tony was silent for a second. “So he could have survived.” 

 

“Would you have survived, if it had been you?” Nat’s voice was softer, too, than it had been a moment ago. 

 

Steve bit his lip in frustration. “I don’t know.”    
  
Stark continued. “If he had made it, he would have been taken by Zola’s men. Treated, experimented on, and used. If he isn’t dead - “

 

“They would have made him into their own super-soldier.” There was resignation in his voice. 

 

“There’s a story,” Nat began slowly. “A super-assassin. He’s supposed to be a ghost story. I always thought it was a series of men - trained like me, maybe someone else’s version of red-room killers. He’s been credited, at least among… other assassins… with fifteen major political assassinations since the 50s. Which is why no one believes in him. No one survives as an assassin for 60 years.” 

 

Tony nodded. “That could be him.” 

 

“It’s an impossible coincidence,” Nat protested. “It’s a ghost story, a series of whispers with no foundation.”

 

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, Red.” 

 

Nat winced. “A few years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, and someone shot at my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But your ghost story was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him. Straight through me.” As she spoke, she shoved the bottom hem of her shirt up enough for them to see. “Soviet slug, no rifling. His signature.” 

 

“Does the ghost have a name?” 

 

They both turned to Steve. He had been so still, so silent, as Natasha spoke that both she and Stark had momentarily forgotten about him. 

 

But when Nat met his eyes, she nodded. “They call him the Winter Soldier.” 

 

***

It had been a week - seven days, and still, the voice whispered  _ Bucky. Bucky is alive _ .

 

But there was a new whisper, now, and it was his voice, not Loki’s voice masked as his own. This one said:  _ You left him. You let him die, you let them take him, you promised him you would never let them take him away from you again and then you left him for dead, he’s gone and even if he is alive, he wouldn’t want  _ **_you_ ** _. Not after you left him. _

 

Alone in his room, alone in the dead of night, Steve picked his compass up off his desk. Settling on the foot of the bed, he pried the image of Peggy up carefully, running a fingernail along the edge. 

 

He hadn’t let himself do this in years, Steve idly noted. But then Peggy’s photo was gone, set aside on the blanket, and Bucky stared at him from the same space, grinning at something stupid he had just said, laughing, like nothing could ever go wrong with the world. 

 

He stared at the photo, trying to remember. They had been in New York, walking home from dinner. It had been Steve’s birthday, and he hadn’t wanted to spend the money, but Bucky insisted. He remembered now. He had just gotten the camera - it was new, and he hadn’t wanted to spend the money on that, either, but he’d just gotten the new job so maybe it was ok, just this once, to splurge. Bucky had wrapped an arm over his shoulders - he had still been tiny, still needed Buck to protect him - the way that he always did, the most contact the could have outside the safety of their apartment, as they walked. They had stopped for a moment, Steve couldn’t remember why now, and he hated himself for it, and Bucky had looked so damn pretty in the light that he had snapped the photo. 

 

Steve had never been much of a photographer - in fact, none of the other photos had turned out the way he wanted them to - but that one was perfect, and he had gotten it printed. 

 

Two weeks later he sold the camera, he preferred to draw anyway, but he kept the negatives. He’d drawn Bucky a thousand times but this was different, this was perfect and exactly the right moment of his laugh, and for a second, sitting in the dark in 2012 in New York, he could hear Bucky laugh again as his thumb brushed against the photo. 

 

Steve sighed. 

 

Carefully, he picked Peggy’s picture up again, smiling at his friend as he slid her image in place. A cover, and a damned good one, was all she had ever been to him. 

 

It was about as hard to be a woman in 1940 as it was to be gay, anyway. So when she’d found out his secret - their secret - Peggy had wanted to help. Captain America was going to win the war for them, she had said. He needed to be perfect in the public eye. 

 

He snapped the compass shut, angry at himself and his world and every single lie he had ever told, and stood up. And just as quickly, his anger was gone. Carefully, reverently, he set the compass down. 

 

And then Steve knew. He would find Bucky. No matter what. No matter who he had become or what he had done. Because he was supposed to be with him until the end of the line. Because he had failed. 

 

Because he wanted nothing in the world more than a chance to apologize. 

 

He made up his mind as he switched off his light and let himself sleep for the first time in days. He would find Bucky, and he would drag his ass home, kicking and screaming if he had to. 

 

Steve Rogers fell asleep with two voices in his head. The first voice whispered,  _ Bucky’s alive. _

 

_ And I’m going to find him _ , his own answered. 

 

***

Tony Stark knew that if he was watching the sun come up, something was wrong. Either he hadn’t slept at all, or someone better have a damn good reason for him to be awake. He was many things, Tony knew. And early riser should never be one of them. Grumbling at Jarvis to close the blinds, he squinted at the video feed in front of him. 

 

Captain America fighting himself was paused on Tony’s computer. And it absolutely was not the most pressing issue he had to face right now, but… that wasn’t Loki.

 

It could be the fact that he hadn’t slept in 49 hours, or that fifth Red Bull that he knew had been a bad idea, but the second man on the screen was definitely not Loki Odinson. 

 

Tony sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Steve was not going to like this. 

 

***

“Don’t hate me, but I think you were right.”

 

“About?”

 

“The guy you fought. It wasn’t Loki.” 

 

Steve choked on his pasta. With difficulty, he swallowed the bite, and then looked up at Tony. “You’re serious?”

 

“Unfortunately. I was watching the security footage last night, or this morning? JARVIS?”

 

“On it, Sir.” 

 

Two images of Steve sprung to life in front of him. 

 

“Now, I know you’re not going to like this, but the uniforms are slightly different.” 

 

“Why wouldn’t I like that?”

 

Tony waved a hand above the figures, and they turned around. Behind the men, nearly silently, Natasha walked into the room. “Because this is your current suit, and it does  _ nothing _ for your ass. But this guy…” 

 

“That’s America’s ass right there.” 

 

Steve didn’t even bother to jump. “Hi, Nat.” 

 

She grinned. “That’s a different suit. Designed to look the same, but it’s got better protection here and here -” Nat tapped Not-Steve’s ribs and helmet as she spoke, and the areas began to glow green. “Plus, whoever designed that suit was looking out for you.” 

 

Steve raised his eyebrows. 

 

Tony took that as his cue to jump in. “Anyway,  _ ass- _ ide from that, he’s slightly bigger than you. And it’s not Loki’s style to go for direct confrontation, not when he could have used the staff on you or just disappeared.”  

 

Electing to ignore the pun, Steve shrugged. “I guess that’s true.”

 

“So I did it!” 

 

“You did what?”

 

“I solved time travel.” 

 

Nat rolled her eyes and wandered away again. “I’ve got better things to do than fuel your ego,” she muttered.

 

Steve sighed, taking the bait. “How do you know you solved it?”

 

Tony smiled. “Who else?”   
  


“Well, even if future you does have this tech, and that's a big if, there’s not much we can do about it.”

 

His smile fell. “I guess that’s true. I can’t track it unless I can figure out how they did it. And it’s not like it’s my tech.”

 

Steve raised a single eyebrow. “I thought it  _ was _ your tech.” 

 

“Shut it.”

 

Steve shrugged, sat back, and continued to eat his lunch. 

 

It was only when Tony snapped his fingers that he looked up again. “Yeah?”

 

“Winter Soldier. Bucky. Whatever. How are you going to find him?” 

 

“You have an idea, Stark?”

 

“Well, you could upload a photo of him to my facial recognition software and hack the global camera system, but other than that, no, nothing.” 

 

“What do you need?”

 

Tony sighed. “A piece of my suit is fused and I don't trust the robots to help me.” 

 

“So I’m your brute strength?”

 

“Hey, I’ll help you if you help me.” Tony couldn’t hide the tinge of defensiveness creeping into his voice. 

 

“I thought we were supposed to be a team?”

 

“So that’s a yes?”

 

“Let me finish my lunch first.” 

 

****

It took them ten minutes to fix Tony’s suit, and another five to scan enough photos of Bucky into JARVIS’ system to satisfy Tony’s perfectionist nature. 

 

It took five  _ hours _ for it to ping a match. 

 

When the alert buzzed through the system, Captain America was halfway to the death of his fourth punching bag of the day. He didn’t notice Tony standing behind him until he spoke. 

 

“So how do you feel about D.C.?”   
  


Steve looked up. “You found him?”

 

“I found a location where he’s been a couple of times in the last decade. Disguised HYDRA base, most likely. If such a thing still exists. It could also be a guy who just happens to look like Bucky visiting an address very infrequently. But, you know, assuming that HYDRA managed to survive under our noses, it’s a base. I doubt he’s there, but a couple of his hypothetical handlers might be.”

 

“The address?”

 

“Already in the jet. Nat’s flying.”   
  


Steve, now nearly clear of the door, walked faster. Tony jogged a few steps to catch up with him. “You coming with us?”

 

“No. Pepper’s flight is due in tonight and I want to be here. But I’ll be able to fly down at a moment’s notice.”

 

Smiling, Steve patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We got it under control. Enjoy your date!”

 

Clint and Nat were waiting on the plane. 

 

“Ready?”

 

Steve shrugged. “HYDRA probably isn’t gone, Bucky probably isn’t dead, Stark is probably going to figure out time travel at some point. A fight sounds exactly like the kind of certainty I need right now.”

 

Clint, who was waxing his bowstring for what was probably the tenth time that day (he’s only a  _ little _ obsessive), snorted. “That’s one way to look at it, Cap.” 

 

Nat grinned over her shoulder. “One fight, coming right up. You know, assuming we’re not chasing ghosts and shadows.”

 

Steve settled into his usual seat. He didn’t have a response to that. His mind had narrowed to one thought. 

 

_ Bucky’s alive.  _


	2. Chapter 2:

Honestly, genuinely, he hadn’t expected to find Bucky today. He had expected to break into some computers, have Nat hack some files, maybe get his location is he was lucky. 

 

Steve hadn’t expected to see Bucky today, or tomorrow, or next week. 

 

Which is why he was more than a little taken aback to have his best friend standing thirty feet away, shooting at him with an automatic rifle in each hand, a black mask covering half his face. 

 

Because even with his hair like that (and God, wasn’t that proof enough that this wasn’t  _ his _ Bucky, Buck would never let his hair grow out like  _ that _ ), and even with… was that a metal arm? 

 

_ Jesus, Buck, what have they done to you? _

 

Nat was pinned down and dangerously low on ammo, he knew. And Clint, on the other side of the street, on the roof of the building they had come to break into, was injured. Steve tapped his comm on. 

 

“Barton, check in.” 

 

A groan filtered through his helmet. “Alive. He hit me in the arm. I’m not bleeding out any time soon, but I can’t shoot.”

 

“Shit. Romanoff?”   
  


“I don’t have an angle.”

 

“Can you get to Barton?”

 

“Uhh... Cap?” Clint’s worried voice broke into their conversation. Nat ignored him. 

 

“Yeah. I’ll evac him and bring the plane around. Give me ten.” 

 

“Cap?”

 

“Move, then. I’ll cover you.” 

 

“CAP!”

 

“What is it, Barton?”

 

“Change the plan. You’re distracting. He’s coming right for you.” 

 

_ Shit. _

 

“Get him out, Nat. That’s an order.”

 

Before either of them could protest, Steve vaulted over the car he had crouched behind, shield locked on his arm. Bucky had ceased firing for long enough that Steve slowly lowered the shield. 

 

“Bucky?”

 

The man in the mask’s eyes narrowed to slits. He dropped the guns. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

 

“Buck. Please. It’s me, it’s Stevie, it’s me, I’m here to take you home.” 

 

(Distantly, he heard Nat mutter, “He never lets  _ me _ call him Stevie.” Barton groaned in response, and Steve chose to ignore them both.) 

 

The man who had been Bucky Barnes began to walk forward. He said nothing. 

 

“You know me, Buck, you have to. Please, Bucky.” Still, even as he begged, some instinct reminded Captain America to keep his shield up. 

 

“I don’t know you.” His voice was flat. There was nothing, not even hatred, in his voice. Somehow, that was worse. “You’re a mark. Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America. You are a target. And you are going to die.” 

 

And then, before Steve could process any of the words or feelings choking him, Bucky was on him, and yes, that  _ was _ a metal arm. He took the first three blows on the shield, caught the next on his forearm, and ducked under a dangerously strong kick. Bucky had taught him to fight, in back alleys and the living rooms of a series of tiny Brooklyn apartments, and Steve knew every single one of his tells. 

 

He knew the way Bucky’s eyes would narrow before he landed a punch, the way he would twist his shoulders away as he prepared to kick. He knew that Bucky would flinch back from any hit he tried to land against Steve, even after he wasn’t Steve anymore, even when he was Captain America, Bucky still wouldn’t put his full force into a blow. 

 

This was  _ not _ Bucky. This man had none of Bucky’s tells, and yet knew every one of Steve’s. Getting hit by that metal arm was like being hit by a truck. And just as quickly as Not-Bucky’s punches came, Steve realized how much trouble he was in. 

 

The answer was  _ a lot _ . So, like the kid he had once been, the smart-ass he had always been, Steve started to talk. He was out of breath ( _ Jesus, that was fast. He could go an hour with Nat and still be able to breathe better than this. _ ) and his words came in gasps between blows. 

 

He didn’t care that they were in the heart of DC, or that Nat and Barton were still listening in on his comms. Bucky was in front of him, albeit trying to kill him, and Steven Grant Rogers was not going to die tonight. 

 

“Bucky, stop. Wait. Listen to me, jerk. We lived in an apartment together for two years, before you were drafted. You didn’t want to fight, even though I did, and I tried to get you to enlist, but you wouldn’t leave me. Till the end of the line, Buck, do you remember? You were always there for me, Bucky. Every asthma attack and nightmare, I came to in your arms, Buck. You were always there. And I failed you, I left you, you fell off the train and I thought I lost you, and then I went into the ice, but my last thought was you, Buck. It was always you. Even when it was wrong or when it was illegal or difficult, even when I was just a punk getting beat up behind a movie theater, it was always you. Buck, you gotta remember.” 

 

(Nat, who was half carrying Barton back to the jet, paused at the emotion breaking Steve’s voice. Stark owed her ten bucks - the Winter Soldier was definitely Steve’s ex. She grinned a little and then scowled down at Clint’s semi-conscious body. “Let’s move, dumbass,” she muttered.)

 

Maybe it was his imagination, but Bucky seemed to be listening. Maybe, maybe, this could work. It was a snowball's chance in hell, or maybe a queer’s chance in 1940, but maybe this would work. He dodged another blow, caught a fist on his shield, never once striking back. 

 

“Listen. Think. Remember. I don’t know what he did to you, Buck, but I thought,” Steve paused as the metal arm swung for his ribs. “I thought you were dead, I thought you were gone. And you’re not, you’re here, and you don’t know who you are, who I am, but we can fix this, Buck, I know we can.” 

 

“You’re my target. And I’m your killer.” 

 

“And you’re the love of my life, Bucky. Remember me, please.”

 

Something like recognition flickered across what Steve could see of his face. And then the metal arm closed around Steve’s throat, and Captain America fought back. 

 

He ripped the mask off, kicked and punched at every inch of exposed skin he could find, and it still wasn’t enough, wasn’t  _ anything _ , to the man who had been Bucky Barnes. 

 

Steve managed to buy himself enough space to breathe, managed to kick Bucky off him, but his shield was now on the Winter Soldier’s arm. Not-Bucky had been right. He  _ was _ going to die. 

 

“You really don’t know who I am?”

 

“I don’t know who  _ I _ am. Why would I know you?”

 

Steve offered a smile, a sad, broken, smile. “Because you always have.” Slowly, he lowered his fists. “Go ahead.” 

 

The Winter Soldier paused for half a heartbeat. 

 

“Go ahead. Kill me.” 

 

(In the cockpit of the jet, Natasha screamed into the comm, Barton bleeding on the floor behind her, not knowing that Steve’s earpiece had been shattered by a blow to the head that had nearly knocked his helmet off.)

 

“Kill me, Bucky. I came out of the ice thinking you were gone forever. And I’d rather die than live in a world where you want to kill me; than live in a world where you don’t know who I am.” 

 

The metal hand closed around his throat again, and this time Steve didn’t stop him. “Finish it.”

 

The flicker of doubt was back in Bucky’s eyes, and for a moment, he looked like the man Steve Rogers had fallen in love with. 

 

He drew a sharp, wheezing breath. If he was going to die, he knew what his last words were going to be - the same last words he had whispered to a hidden photo all those decades ago. 

 

Steve smiled up at his killer, and he choked out three words. 

 

And then his world went black. 

 

***

“Are you  _ stupid _ , Steve Rogers?? Or do you want to die? Because I can arrange that very easily.” 

 

“Nat?”

 

“Of course it’s Nat, you great fucking idiot. What the hell was that? ‘Go ahead, kill me, finish it, I’m Captain America and I’d rather make a grand romantic gesture than fucking live!’” She kept her rant up, but it had lapsed into Russian, and Steve was fairly sure whatever she was shouting at him was not complimentary in the slightest. 

 

“She has a point,” another familiar voice drawled. “Next time you decide to get murdered by an ex-boyfriend, can you not do it when I have a hot date?” There was a light whacking noise as though Pepper had just thrown something at Tony’s head. “Ow.” 

 

Then Pepper herself floated into his field of vision. Offering water. What a saint this woman was. “You alright, Steve? You gave us all quite a scare.”

 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his temples as he sat up. “I’m alright.” He took the glass with a nod. “Thanks. Is Clint?”

 

“Out of surgery. And completely fine.” Nat’s words were clipped and heavily accented, but English, at least. 

 

“Pissed that he can’t shoot for a month or two, but fine,” Tony added. 

 

“And…?” Steve was afraid to ask, but Stark knew what his next question would be. 

 

“The Psycho Ex-Boyfriend?  He’s locked up. Borrowed a Hulk-cell from Fury. Currently, it’s on the roof. I don’t know how many people have survived the wrath of Natasha Romanoff, but he looks like she dragged him ass-backward through hell.” 

 

Steve glanced up at Nat, who offered a tiny smile. “Yeah well, not all of us are willing to let you die, Cap.” Before he could say a word, she slipped out of the room, mumbling an excuse about checking on Clint. 

 

Pepper, to, excused herself. “Someone has to run Stark Industries,” she said with a smile. 

 

Tony propped his feet up on the bed, leaning back in his chair. “It sure as hell won’t be me,” he muttered. 

 

With a long-suffering sigh in Tony’s direction and a nod to Steve, the door hissed shut behind her, and the two men were left alone. 

 

For a long moment, everything was silent. 

 

“I have to ask. I mean, you don’t have to tell me but really, Cap, would you have actually let him?” Even Tony Stark couldn’t bring himself to speak the last two words. 

 

“I don’t know.” 

 

And really, there was nothing even Tony could say to that. 

 

***

 

He was the Winter Soldier. He knew no one, nothing, but his next target. He was invincible, he was inevitable. 

 

He was Bucky Barnes. 

 

He didn’t feel fear. 

 

He was afraid. 

 

He was never alone - HYDRA was always behind him. Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place. He was powerful, impossible. He was death. 

 

He was alone, afraid, and isolated, on a roof in the middle of a city he had once known. He wasn’t sure who he was or how he had gotten there, but there was something important. 

 

Something both sides of his mind were screaming for, searching for. 

 

_ Steve _ . 

 

Bucky knew the name the way he had once known his own. It was everything. The Winter Soldier knew the file - a target, and he would move on. 

 

He sighed, slumping further against the glass wall. His arm hung limp, useless, at his side. Three glowing red disks - property of Tony Stark - had deactivated it in seconds. 

 

Some super-soldier he was turning out to be. 

 

Bucky ( _ the Winter Soldier _ , part of his mind screamed,  _ remember who you are, nothing matters but the mission. _ ) was tired. He was a man quite literally out of time. And he was only now starting to remember who he had once been. The blond one, Stevie, had reminded him. Somehow. 

 

And then the roof door swung open on perfectly balanced hinges and both sides of his warring psyche snapped to attention. 

 

_ The target _ , the Soldier wailed. 

 

_ Stevie _ , the man corrected. 

 

“Bucky,” he said aloud. “My name is Bucky Barnes. And you’re Steve Rogers.” 

 

And the smile Steve gave him was almost enough to make both screaming voices disappear. 

 

*

“Buck. Good to see you. You look like hell.” 

 

“You should see the other guy.” 

 

“I did. She looks a lot better.” 

 

“Can’t win them all, punk.” 

 

Steve smiled again, before remembering. His left hand drifted to his throat, to the bruises already forming. 

 

“So you’re you?”

 

“Kinda. Mostly.” Bucky saw the unconscious gesture and winced. “Jesus, Steve. Did I do that?”

 

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. In the silence, Bucky sank to his knees. He was pale, Steve realized. 

 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he inhaled. “I know.”

 

“It wasn’t me. I mean, it was me, but…”

 

“HYDRA was in control. I thought we ruined those bastards 60 years ago.”

 

“You didn’t.” There was nothing but bitterness in Bucky’s voice. 

 

“I know that now. You know who I am now, Bucky? Who you are?”   
  


That won him a small smile. “You’re Steve. My best friend. You used to put newspapers in your shoes to look taller. Your mother was the kindest woman I’ve ever met. And you were an idiot who could never walk away from a fight. No matter what, you never put yourself first. Apparently, you still haven’t learned.”

 

Steve winced. “It was the only way I could think to snap you out of it.”

 

“It didn’t work.”

 

Bucky could almost hear Steve’s shock as he processed that. “What do you mean?” He was forcing the lightness into his voice now, and they both knew it. “You’re standing here, talking to me.”

 

“You didn’t snap me out of it. Being dragged by the Black Widow past your half-dead body, though, that did the trick.” 

 

“Buck…”

 

He slammed his palm against the Hulk-proof glass, and for a moment, the Soldier flashed across his face. But when he spoke, the words were so deadly soft that Steve, even with super-human senses, could hardly hear him over the wind. “I almost killed you.” 

 

“Buck…”

 

“You were going to  _ let me kill you _ .” 

 

Steve dropped to a sitting position, putting a careful distance between himself and the oversized cell. He scrubbed a hand down his face as he sighed. When he finally opened his eyes, he seemed far away. “I know.”

 

“You meant what you said.” There was no question in Bucky’s words - it was a statement of fact, nothing more. 

 

“I did.” 

 

“I’m not a good person, Stevie. I’m not the same person. I’ve done… I’ve done bad things.”

 

“I know you have. But maybe that wasn’t you. You were being controlled, right?”   
  


“Mostly. Not all the time. I got away once or twice. Broke their control. Mostly in the beginning. Once I forgot you, your name, your face, your laugh, they broke me more often than I broke away from them.”

 

Steve didn’t speak for a moment. From the way he held himself - shoulders stiff, head down - Bucky could tell he was trying not to cry. 

 

Softly, almost not daring to form the words, he asked, “Will you let me out of here, Stevie?”   
  


Steve shook his head. “You know I can’t.”

 

“I went from being a prisoner of the bad guys to a prisoner of the good ones.” 

 

“Once Stark clears your arm for anything bad and Nat finishes decrypting those files, maybe we can talk again, ok?”

 

Bucky had already turned away. “Ok, Steve.”

 

With a sigh, he stood. “Ok. I can have you moved downstairs, now that your arm is shut down. I know how much you hate heights.” 

 

And just as quickly as he’d come, Steve Rogers was gone, back through the door and into the building below. 

 

He was afraid of heights. 

 

_ Of course, you are, you always have been _ , the man whispered. 

 

_ We are the Winter Soldier,  _ the Wolf answered, baring his teeth.  _ We don’t fear anything. _

 

And yet, when he turned in his cell and stared over the outline of Manhattan below, unmistakable dread curled in the pit of his stomach. With every fiber of his body screaming at him to step back, to get off the roof, Bucky Barnes smiled. 

 

Because only the Winter Soldier was not afraid of heights. 

 

***

 

“Can’t sleep either, huh?”

 

Steve didn’t seem to hear him, so Tony cleared his throat and tried again. 

 

“Hello? Stars and Stripes? You awake in there?”

 

This time, he sat up with a start. “Sorry. What were you saying?”   
  


“I was asking why you’re up at 3:30 in the morning, sitting in my kitchen, drinking my coffee.”

 

Steve winced, running a hand through his hair. A cup of clearly long-forgotten coffee sat next to an open sketchbook. Now that Tony looked again, that was a pencil in his hand. “Like you said. I can’t sleep. Figured I might as well caffeinate if I was going to be up all night.”

 

“Your talk with Bucky didn’t go as planned?”

 

He glanced quickly to the live feed from Bucky’s room - a locked and monitored guest room since Stark Tower wasn’t exactly equipped for holding hostages. “Something like that,” Steve mumbled. 

 

Stark, for once, didn’t pry. “Fury’s coming in the morning,” he tossed over his shoulder as he poured two fresh cups of coffee. “I decrypted the operative list for HYDRA. It’s not an isolated cell like we thought. It looks like half of SHIELD is compromised.”   
  


Accepting the coffee with a smile, Steve looked up. “That bad?”

 

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Hopefully, they can take care of it quietly.”

 

“This is a goddamn mess.” 

 

“Probably.” Stark shrugged. “Cream? Sugar?”

 

“No, thanks.” In two big sips, Steve drained the rest of his coffee. “I should probably try to get some rest.”

 

“Good plan. Of course, if you were to happen to stop by Bucky’s cell, where he happens to be awake, as I’m sure you know, since you’ve been watching the video feed for half the night, you could tell him that, while I was doing some work in my lab anyway, I made a few improvements to his arm. And, you know, if any of that were to have happened, I may have updated your suit, too. And Nats, and Clint’s, since the idiots insist on getting shot. 

 

But, since you’re going to bed, you’re not gonna get the chance to tell him any of that, since we’re going to have to surrender him to Fury in the morning.”

 

Steve glanced at the video again, and then back to Tony. With as straight a face as he could keep, he nodded. “That’s a lot of conjecture, Stark. Get some sleep, now.”

 

Tony took another sip of his coffee. “You too, old man.” 

 

With a small smile, Steve walked from the room, never once with the intention of going back to his own bed. 

 

***   
  


“Someone there?”

 

“Me.” The door slid open as he spoke, and Steve stepped into the room. 

 

“Steve. Hi.” 

 

“How you feeling?”

 

Bucky turned from where he had been standing by the window. The room was sealed - no windows or doors would open from within - and even JARVIS wouldn’t answer a command from inside. Hell of an upgrade from a Hulk-chamber, though. “Less and less like a homicidal maniac with each passing moment.”

 

He smiled, but Steve still hovered in the doorway. “I’m glad. Listen, we got into the files. SHIELD is compromised. We’re gonna have to hand you over to Fury when we give him the information.”

 

Bucky nodded. “I figured. So this is your goodbye?”

 

“No. I… I lost you once, Buck, I can’t lose you again. We just have to be sure…”

 

“You have to be sure it’s really me. I know.” His gaze drifted to the bruises clear on Steve’s neck, cataloging the way he favored his ribs, the careful weight he was trying not to place on his left ankle. “I don’t want you anywhere near me right now, Stevie. I did that to you. I almost killed you. And you can’t be sure I won’t do it again.” 

 

Before he could protest, Bucky raised his normal hand to stop him. 

 

“I know you, or at least, I knew you. I taught you to fight, I watched you become Captain America. And I think my Steve wants to forgive me and let all this go. But the Captain can’t be sure. And you have to trust him.”

 

Steve closed his eyes for a long second. “I know. But once we know for sure that HYDRA’s really gone and you’re really you…”

 

He smiled. “You’ll come back to me. I know.”

 

Steve nodded once, and then twice. He turned, reaching to unlock the door. For a second, it looked like he was going to say something. And then he changed his mind, glancing once more over his shoulder as he left. 

 

Alone once more, the dark skyline of Manhattan behind him, the Soldier had stopped whispering. All that was left, at least for the moment, was the man. 

 

“I love you too, Stevie,” Bucky whispered to the closed door. 

 

No one but JARVIS heard him. 


	3. Chapter 3:

“Let me just… give me a moment here. Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you broke into a private building, had a shoot-out in the middle of D.C., nearly let a ghost story of an assassin kill your ass, and then hacked his servers and found out that HYDRA is growing inside  _ my _ organization, all because Stark here is going to invent time travel, which you figured out because when you fought  **Loki** , his ass looked better than yours?”

 

“Yessir.” 

 

“You couldn’t give me a week to clean up your last damn mess?”

 

Seated next to him, Nat stifled a laugh. 

 

Fury, unfortunately, noticed. “Don’t get me started on you, Romanoff. You’re just as involved as these two.” 

 

“Respectfully, sir…”

 

“Respectfully, my ass, Stark. You let this happen.”

 

For once, he didn’t say a word. Instead, Steve broke in. “Director, all due respect, but what’s done is done, and we uncovered a major leak in your organization.” 

 

“And now I have to deal with it. Look, I can’t take Barnes with me. I take him in, and HYDRA is gonna jailbreak him and know we’re on to them. So if I were you, I would go and take a vacation. The whole team. Get out of the public eye for a bit. Heal up from New York. And since  _ I _ certainly don’t know you have Mr. Barnes in your custody, well, there’s not much I can do about it, understood?”

 

Steve smiled a little. “Understood, sir.” 

 

“If I were you, I would ask Agent Barton where he got his start. It’s a pretty good, secure location, and we haven’t actively used the location in years. Of course, this is all in the name of team building, you understand. Get to know him type conversation. I’m not encouraging you to go there, and I’m certainly not telling you that both my agents will have clearance to get in.”

 

Clint and Nat nodded in near unison as Fury stood up. 

 

“I’ll be in touch. If any friendlies come sniffing around, make sure they can tell you the weather in Moscow.” 

 

And then he was gone. 

 

Tony let out a low whistle. “Glad he’s not my boss.”

 

“The weather in Moscow?” Steve mused aloud.

 

“It’s an inner-circle code we retired years ago.” Nat twirled a tiny knife between her fingers almost absentmindedly. “Only the real old-guard will remember it, and only those Fury trusted implicitly back then. ‘I don’t know about the weather in Moscow, but it looks like rain in D.C.’ is how you’re supposed to answer. We had a big field office there for years, during the Cold War, but most of our agents were ordered home when the Berlin Wall came down.”

 

Steve nodded along as she spoke. He knew the events in history she was referencing, even if he hadn’t been there himself. The internet, he reflected, was great when it came to things like this. “And uhh, where did Barton get his start?”

 

“Old SHIELD compound,” Clint offered as he swung his boots off the table. With a grunt, he stood up. “Ow. It’s maybe an hour flight upstate. Not far from where you got started, Cap.” 

 

Tony stood too. “I’m thinking the helicopter is less obtrusive than the jet. Clint, can you fly it?”

 

“Course.”

 

“Give me an hour. I need to find Pepper, let her know what’s going on. It might be a good idea if she runs the company from the West Coast for a few days. I’d rather not have her in the building if HYDRA traces this back to us.”

 

“Good. Everyone pack whatever you’ll need. Can someone get a message to Thor, too, to coordinate the search for Loki through our new location?”

 

“On it, Cap.” 

 

“Thanks, Nat. Find Banner, too. I know he’s removed himself from the equation, but I want him in the loop.” She nodded. “Barton, you’re ok to fly with a hurt arm?”

 

“I’ve done it with worse.” 

 

Steve wasn’t sure if that was meant to be comforting or not, but he still nodded back. “I’ll get Bucky. One hour, we meet on the roof, ready to go.” 

 

The team nodded back, already on their way to complete their task. Nat was bent over the screen set into the table, issuing quiet commands to JARVIS. Clint was packing a gear bag with a bow pulled from God-knows-where, and Tony was nearly to the door, calling for Pepper.

 

“And guys?”

 

At Steve’s voice, all three looked up.  

 

“Bring your suits. You never know if we’re going to need them.” 

 

***

 

“I’m not making you wear the handcuffs.”

 

“And here I am, wearing them anyway.”

 

“Trouble in paradise?” 

 

Stark strolled through the roof access door, hands shoved into his pockets, a veritable mountain of tech trailing behind him. 

 

“Stark. You’re early.” 

 

“Why, yes, yes I am, Cap. Thank you for noticing. And not that I don’t trust your judgement, but this is the same guy who nearly killed you, oh, what was that, yesterday? The cuffs stay on, if you don’t mind.” 

 

“Of course, I could kill you all in handcuffs, but we’re just going to discredit the assassin’s opinion, I guess.” Grinning, a black duffle bag slung over her shoulder, Nat landed lightly on the roof. “You’re looking better.” 

 

“The serum…” Both Cap and Bucky trailed off as quickly as they had begun their sentences. 

 

“Uh, who are you talking to?” Steve asked. 

 

“The one I nearly killed yesterday.” 

 

“Tin Man,” Tony clarified, rather unhelpfully. 

 

Steve cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything. Bucky turned to look at Natasha. “I might look better, but trust me, I’m not going to be able to run anywhere any time soon. Not that I would need to. The serum…”

 

“Speeds up your healing, but doesn’t erase the pain while you heal. Same as your Star-Spangled boyfriend here.” Tony pretended to not notice how uncomfortable half of their rooftop group was suddenly looking. “By the by, shouldn’t our ride be arriving soon?”   
  


Nat nodded. “Clint’s on his way. He should be here any minute now.”

 

Almost before she finished speaking, the heavy whir of helicopter blades interrupted her. 

 

“Speak of the devil,” Tony muttered, “And he shall descend in a helicopter with your name on it.”

 

The white STARK logo slid aside as Nat tugged the door open. “You gonna stand there all day?” she called to the waiting men. 

 

With a sigh, Tony began to lug his piles of stuff towards the helicopter’s door. “Some help would be nice, super-soldiers.” 

 

Steve grabbed a few boxes and strode forward, figuring Tony’s irritation was not something he wanted to provoke. Bucky, on the other hand, just grinned. 

 

“Can’t, sorry,” he deadpanned, sounding anything but. “The cuffs have to stay on.” 

 

And leaving a spluttering Tony Stark in his wake, he sat down next to Natasha Romanoff for what was already promising to be a  _ very _ uncomfortable helicopter ride. 

 

***

“Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle until the car has come to a complete stop. You may now exit the helicopter. Thank you for choosing Barton Express.”

 

Nat rolled her eyes as she jumped to the ground. “Perimeter scan?”   
  


“Clear. Just like Fury said it would be.” 

 

“Good. Barton, take Cap and Stark inside. Barnes, you’re with me.”

 

He shrugged, good naturedly enough. “You know the handcuffs don’t do shit, right?”   
  


She turned away, not bothering to check if the others were following her orders. “I know. But it keeps Stark from getting his panties in a twist.”

 

Bucky nodded. “Who’s in charge around here, anyway?”

 

“In battle? Probably Cap. Usually? Whoever shouts the loudest. But really, it’s me. They just don’t know it yet.” 

 

He gave the slight woman an appraising glance. “You know, I think they just might.” 

 

Natasha seemed to feel his judgement without turning around. He had to give her that - none of the other Avengers were willing to so much as put their back to him. Not even Steve. But, Bucky thought, she had taken him down easily enough. She seemed to sense his line of thought. 

 

“We aren’t friends yet, Barnes. Don’t push it, and don’t go getting any ideas.” 

 

Quietly, he smiled. He could see why Steve liked this Russian girl so much. She was a little bit like their own Peggy Carter - except red-headed, with a hotter temper, and a few more knives. Still, both agents could kick his ass and had a cute Stark boy at their beck and call. The similarities, he decided, outweighed the differences. 

 

***

Bucky was in a cell. 

 

_ Bucky’s alive _ , the voice insisted.  _ That’s all that matters _ . 

 

But he was in a cell, 25 feet of concrete floors and ceilings below Steve’s own bedroom, and Steve couldn’t sleep. 

 

Bucky had no such qualms, he knew. Soldier’s instincts. They  _ should _ both be able to doze off anywhere. Judging by the video feed he probably shouldn’t have accessed, Bucky was sound asleep. 

 

Steve was sitting upright in his bed, the mattress a little too soft beneath him, an open leather-bound sketchbook balanced on his knees. A charcoal pencil in his hand. 

 

Steve couldn’t sleep, so he had turned to the best ( _ second best _ , something that sounded a little like Bucky’s voice teased) way to make himself drowsy - drawing. And the only thing in his brain was Bucky. So that was what he drew. He had filled pages now - Bucky’s hands, his hair, his half-smile when Steve called him out on doing something stupid. He drew Bucky Barnes the way he remembered him - carefree and mischievous; alive and well and living in New York. 

 

Steve drew the Bucky he’d fallen in love with. The Bucky who had shared a tiny, one bedroom apartment with him ‘because the rent was cheaper’, the Bucky who had held him through every nightmare and kept him alive countless times on the front. 

 

With a deep sigh, he put down the pencil. Drawing had turned into reminiscing, and that was dangerous. Bucky was dangerous. 

 

Less than a day ago, Steve had been dying with Bucky’s hand around his throat, and now he was forgiving him, daydreaming of the stupid kids they had been seven, even eight decades ago. 

 

_ This is bad _ , Steve thought.  _ This is really bad _ . 

 

But still, as he clicked off his light and lay in the dark, the voice in his head whispered,  _ Bucky’s alive _ . 

 

And that was more than enough to make Steve Rogers smile. 

 

***

 

The Avengers were having breakfast together. And no one had pulled a weapon yet, so Barton counted that as a win. Of course, they were all too tired to even try to pretend to talk to one another, so that helped. It was their second morning in the old SHIELD facility, and last night every single alarm in the building had gone off at one time or another. They knew it was going to happen - had spent the night in shifts in command central to monitor if there was a real threat - but no one had slept. 

 

Stark was building JARVIS into the security system. He said it was the best way to coordinate all their information and contacts. And Clint didn’t disagree, per se. 

 

But he was a world renowned spy, and he was falling asleep over his coffee, so he had a few complaints.

 

Nat seemed to be having the same train of thought. Or, at least, Clint assumed she was, since she was poking him with the end of a knife. 

 

“Training after breakfast?”   
  


“Do you recall the part of the day before yesterday where I was shot?”

 

“Is that a yes?”

 

“Yeah, may as well. We have a med bay in here, right?”

 

Steve looked up from his breakfast. “Actually, I wanted your help this morning. Both of you.” 

 

(Tony took that moment to cough and mutter something that sounded like, “And what about me?”, but let it go.)

 

“With what, Cap?” The knife had mysteriously disappeared up Nat’s sleeve. 

 

“I want to check Bucky. See if he’s really back, or if it’s a HYDRA plot. And I’m not exactly impartial.” 

 

Clint nodded. “Worst case scenario, we could always try cognitive recalibration.” 

 

“What’s that?” Steve asked, brows furrowing. 

 

“We hit him really hard on the head,” Nat answered without looking up. 

 

At Steve’s glare, Clint shrugged. “Call it Plan C.”

 

“What’s Plan B?” Steve was clearing dishes, and Cint handed over his empty plate with a grateful smile. 

 

“I’ll let you know when we need one.” 

 

*

“Did you know that Agent Carter made you an agent of SHIELD? Honorarily, of course.”

 

“What?”

 

“So you could be awarded ‘every possible honor’, and because you had been ‘instrumental in the founding of the organization.’” Nat flipped the file shut. “Her words.” 

 

Bucky smiled. “I didn’t know that.” 

 

“Of course, that also means we have a serious problem with you, Mr. Barnes.” 

 

“Oh?”

 

“As a founding member of SHIELD, you have a high level of clearance. High enough to give me orders.” Her voice had dropped into a mask - hard and cold and terrifying.  “As a traitor and a member of HYDRA, well…” 

 

“Let’s just say we aren’t exactly short on places to leave your body.” The door slammed shut behind Barton with sickening finality. 

 

In the observation booth, on the other side of a wall of mirrored glass, Steve winced as the lock clicked home. He knew and trusted Barton and Romanoff, but he would  _ not _ want to be on Bucky’s end of this. Next to him, Tony tapped commands into his hand-held. 

 

“Got it.” 

 

“You sure this lie detector test is going to work?”

 

Tony paused. “Mostly. Trust the tech, Grandpa. I can probably tell if it’s really him.” 

 

“And if you can’t?”

 

“That’s why you’re here. Who better to tell if it seems like the Actual Mr. Barnes than his Cap-cicle boyfriend?”

 

Steve scowled, but he didn’t contradict Tony. Intead, he touched a button and leaned towards the mic. “Agents? We’re all set up here.” 

 

In the room, neither one gave any indication they had heard him. 

 

“They’re good,” Tony muttered. 

 

“They’re better than good,” Steve shot back. “They’re the best.” 

 

Below them, Barton kept talking. 

 

“This is a list of every hit that’s ever been attributed to you.” 

 

“Not me.” 

 

“Pardon?” That was Nat, seated at the table, papers spread in front of her. 

 

“Every hit ever attributed to the Winter Soldier.” 

 

“A man with your face, and your metal arm.” Her skepticism was clear, and convincing. 

 

Bucky shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I get that someone has to be punished for this, and if that’s me, than I won’t object to it. At all. I hate myself for every life I took for them. But it wasn’t  _ me _ . It was someone else that they shoved inside my skull and forced me to obey.” 

 

Clint swooped in before Nat could say a word. “Assuming we believe you, just assuming, for a second. How’d they control you for so long?”

 

“I don’t know. Brainwashing of some kind. I don’t know how they put it in, but if I hear the right sequence of words…”

 

“You reset. Back to their puppet.” There was no emotion in Nat’s voice. 

 

Bucky nodded. “Exactly.” 

 

“Ok.” She stood up. “That’s all I needed. Stark?”

 

Tony checked the levels on his screen again. “Everything matches up. He’s not lying, unless he was lying every other time we talked to him.” 

 

“Open the door, then, we’re coming out.” Turning back to Bucky, her face softened a little. “I want to believe you, I really do.” Before anyone could ask what that meant, she was through the door and up to the control room. 

 

Before Stark could open his mouth, Natasha cut him off. “Clint was right.” 

 

“I was?”

 

“Cognitive recalibration.”

 

“I thought you already hit him really hard on the head?” Cap was watching the conversation with interest, if not approval.    
  


Nat smiled. “I did. Several times. But he needs a scalpel, not a bullet.”

 

Barton seemed to be catching up to her train of thought. “Loki controlled me through brute force. He imposed his will, and with the scepter, I couldn’t avoid it. But Barnes was brainwashed, used and manipulated.” 

 

Steve was starting to figure their plan out. “So if we could go in and undo HYDRA’s damage…” 

 

“Then we’ve got one less HYDRA agent to deal with.” Barton nodded. “I found Plan B.” 

 

“Stark? Could you do it?”   
  


He pulled his glasses off by the nose piece, staring up from his chair at Steve, Nat and Clint, all crammed into the tiny observation space. “Maybe. Maybe I could. Pepper knows this guy, best brain surgeon in the world. Smartest guy I’ve ever met, present self excluded, of course. Let me call him, ask him a few questions. Give me a few days, and maybe.” He offered a small smile. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do while we’re stuck here.” 

 

“Meantime,” Steve jumped in, “Natasha, reach out to Fury. See what the situation is. Clint, I want to hear from Banner and Thor immediately. I want to know that they’re aware they can’t fall back on SHIELD. Stark…”

 

“Let me stop you right there. I will not be taking any orders, since I’m in the middle of about ten things at once, including a new arm for Bucky-boy here and new suits for all of you. Not to mention, oh, that’s right, figuring out how to delete decades of brainwashing from your boyfriend’s head. So, if that’s all you need me for, I’ll be in my lab.” He rose, sketched a mock bow to the remnants of his team, and left, glasses still dangling from his hand. 

 

Steve shrugged. “That was better than I honestly expected.” 

 

“Pause,” Nat interrupted. “When’d he have time to set up a lab?”    
  


“No idea. You guys ok handing communications?” When the remaining two nodded, Steve smiled. “Good. Take an hour or so, then let’s meet up for some group training. I think there was more than one right idea at breakfast.” 

 

*

 

“Nat?”

 

“Got it!” 

 

Steve smiled as he tucked his shield over his shoulder, crouching low. There was the sound of running feet behind him, and then Natasha’s full weight was on his shield and he was shoving her up, and then he was on his feet again, guarding her six as she came down on the other side of the training hall, maybe 50 yards away. 

 

“You nearly hit the ceiling that time,” Barton observed from his corner. He’d set up a long gear table and a small folding chair, and was busy sharpening, weighing, and testing what seemed like thousands of arrow points. He’d also, if Steve was keeping count correctly, restrung three different bows, sharpened at least two dozen knives, and reorganized enough exploding arrowheads to take out most of the building. Clint was not taking kindly to being told he couldn’t train. 

 

Of course, Steve had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Until he had ripped open his arm again scaling the rafters of the room, and Nat had had to sew him up again. After that, he was firmly, completely, benched. 

 

Nat offered him a sly grin as she rolled to her feet. “I’ll have to be more careful next time.” 

 

“I don’t think there’s gonna be a next time. I’m sore enough without having you jumping off my shoulder every ten seconds. I’m calling it for the day.” As he spoke, Steve propped his shield up against the wall. 

 

She sighed, but nodded her understanding. “C’mon, Clint. I want to check that arm, make sure you’re not bleeding out on us.” 

 

Barton stood, grumbling. “Like I could, with you hovering over me, you mother hen.”

 

In a distinctly un-assassin-like move, Nat chose to stick her tongue out at him. “Let’s go, Hawkass.” 

 

Smiling, still complaining, he followed. 

 

Steve sighed, stretching out his shoulder. He hadn’t lied to Nat - a Chitauri had gotten him good in New York, and his arm still wasn’t the same. He grabbed his shield from it’s haphazard place by the door, following his team. His vague plan was to shower, change, and then maybe go visit Bucky. Or maybe he would try to take a nap. 

 

None of that, as it transpired, was going to happen. Before Cap was even clear of the door, an alarm went off, pulsing loudly through the hallways. Overhead, the lights turned deep, ominous red. 

 

“The hell is that?” He was shouting, jogging to catch up with the others.

 

“Something’s coming at us, fast, and whatever it is, it’s not one of ours.” Barton looked paler than he had a moment ago in the red light. 

 

Nat winced. She noticed, too. “I’ll get up to command central, ID the threat. Barton, get to Stark. Make sure he can pull his head out of his robots long enough to suit up. Cap, you’re with me. No one touches Barnes. As much as I doubt we’ve been betrayed - “ 

 

“It could be HYDRA’s attempt to get him back.” 

 

“Exactly.”

 

Steve sighed. “Suit up, everyone. And stay on your comms. I want to hear from everyone in the building within ten minutes.” The siren wailed again, interrupting his train of thought. Without pausing for further command, he began to jog through the narrow corridor, Nat close on his heels. 

 

Something big was coming. And he was absolutely sure he wasn’t going to like whatever it was. 


	4. Chapter 4:

The Asgardian landed in the middle of a pine tree. Watching from behind a bank of screens, Tony winced. “I don’t care what realm you’re from, that’s  _ gotta _ hurt.” 

 

Nat’s lips twitched in what looked like it might be a smile. “Let’s go, boys. It looks like we’re the welcome committee.” 

 

As it turned out, Captain America and the Black Widow were the only welcome committee Thor got. 

 

Stark was suiting up, Barton was injured and holding central command, and Bucky… well, Bucky was possibly evil and locked in a cell. 

 

Steve grinned widely as he jogged into the clearing. “Thor! Good to see you. Everything alright?”

 

Thor, by contrast, scowled as he fished a pinecone out of his armor. “No. Everything is not all right. I found Loki, and I pursued him directly into a trap, and now he’s following me, with an army of ungodly beasts, and so here I am, requesting your help.”   
  


Nat leaned forward a little. “I’m sorry, did you say an army?”

 

“Of ungodly beasts, yes. He’s only got a few dozen of the monsters, but my brother managed to summon hell-hounds. No one’s done it and survived for a thousand years! I would be very proud of him, but, well, he’s using them to kill me.” 

 

“And you can’t outrun them?” Steve frowned. 

 

“No!” For someone being pursued across the realms by ungodly beasts and a vengeful brother, Thor was downright chipper. “Once they catch your scent…” 

 

“Let me guess. You can’t shake ‘em.”

 

“Precisely, woman of spiders! You instructed me to come to this location if I needed any assistance. Here I am, requesting your help.”

 

Steve sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Of course you are. Alright. How long do we have until Loki arrives?”

 

Thor’s frown deepened. “A few minutes? A few days? Time works differently in the spaces between the realms. I lost him trying to get to Earth, but he’ll guess that this is where I’d flee.”

 

“Let’s assume minutes. Nothing ever goes  _ that _ well for us,” Natasha deadpanned. 

 

“In that case, we need to use all the time we have. Thor, let’s get you inside. I need to hear everything you can tell us about these… ungodly beasts. Starting with how to kill them.” 

 

*

It was two hours before Loki appeared, in a cloud of green smoke and howling monsters, outside their front gates. 

 

“I still don’t understand, why would he come to Earth at all? He’s risking everything. His freedom, the Tesseract...” 

 

Thor looked over his shoulder as Cap spoke. “Well,  _ I _ have the Tesseract.”

 

“You know, next time, lead with that,” Stark offered. 

 

“You have the Tesseract?”

 

“I stole it from Loki weeks ago! That’s why he’s pursuing me so intently.” As the room groaned, Thor frowned. “Did I not make that clear?”

 

“Can we have it?” When Thor snapped twice, the cube appeared, hovering an inch above his palm. Gently, it touched down, and he handed the Tesseract to Steve. “Alright, Barton?” He tossed it underhand in Clint’s general direction. “Lock this thing up.”

 

“Oh sure, because that’s going to help with the army of ungodly beasts.” 

 

“Just do it,” Steve sighed. “Natahsa, any word from Fury?”

 

“Negative, Cap.” 

 

“Then we have to assume we’re on our own here. Thor, you’re going to go out first, try to pull Loki off our front gates and get us some breathing room. Stark, you’re with me, we’ll be right behind Thor. Nat, stay here. You’re mobile reserve - don’t join us until we need you. Barton,”

 

“Let me guess. Stay here, keep an eye on everything, and under no uncertain terms am I to engage.” 

 

He nodded. “Exactly.”

 

“Got it, Cap.” 

 

“You’re injured, Clint, you’d be as much a liability as an asset in the field.” Natasha, busy strapping knives to her belt, had noticed the bitterness in Clint’s voice.    
  
“I get it, but I don’t have to like it,” he muttered back. 

 

“Enough, both of you. Thor, it’s time.”

 

With a nod, he was gone. Silently, they watched him appear on monitor, making for the front gates. 

 

“Stark?”

 

The Iron Man suit came to life in the corner as the man lounging inside of it rose. “Ready.” 

 

Captain America paused for a moment, surveying the remnants of his team. “See you all on the other side,” he said, offering a small smile with his words. “Let’s go,” he said to Tony. And in a blink, it was just Nat and Clint. 

 

“You good to hold down the fort for a second? I’m gonna go make sure Fury gave us clearance to the vault.” 

 

Nat was watching the screens intently. She didn’t even look up. “Be fast,” she offered. 

 

Clint nodded. And then he and the Tesseract were both gone. 

 

***

Steve had no idea what had happened. When he left command central, Thor and Loki had been trading shouted insults. Now, as he emerged from the building, the sky had turned a dangerous grey, and the monsters were looming every closer. As they watched, Thor charged his brother, and the hellhounds charged them. 

 

“Stark? Up top. Get me an idea what the hell’s going on here. Thor, keep Loki occupied. And Nat? We might need that backup sooner than we thought.” Before he could hear anyone’s response, Steve was overrun. 

 

The beasts were huge, easily the size of a small horse, with teeth bigger than Steve’s index finger. They were mean, armored, and he  _ really _ didn’t like the look of the… was that venom in their mouths? He sighed. What ever happened to a  _ normal _ fight? 

 

“Cap? Thor was on the money. There’s about three dozen of the things.” Through his earpiece, Steve registered the faint sound of repulsors firing. He jammed his shield up into the throat of the nearest beast, then ducked under it to slam vibranium into its belly. 

 

“Aim for gaps in the armor!” he advised. “And don’t let them get close enough to use their teeth. They could rip through you suit in a heartbeat.” He dodged another blow, rolling through a clump of the beasts. “The armor is too thick, I can’t get through,” Steve added, nearly as an afterthought. 

 

Nat’s voice broke through the melee. “I’m coming out. Cap, you got a preference on weapon?”

 

He couldn’t remember the last time he had shot a gun. “Whatever you got, Romanoff. Bring it all. We’re gonna need it.” 

 

Before he could complete his thought, the monster he was fighting snapped at his unprotected throat, and he rolled to avoid decapitation. “STARK!”

 

“On it,” came the reply. And then repulsors fired and the hellhound slobbering on his chest was nothing more than venomous dust. 

 

“Thanks.” 

 

“You can have the next one,” Tony told him as he lifted off again. 

 

Quickly, he fell into a pattern of rolling under and avoiding the mouths and claws of beasts, all while doing his best to knock them down. He couldn’t kill them. The shield wasn’t sharp enough to puncture their armor, nor thin enough to slip into those few, narrow, chinks. It could have been seconds or hours between when Tony blasted off and Natasha appeared beside him. He wasn’t sure. 

 

What he was sure of was the weight of the gun in his hand as he clicked the shield over his left arm, and the warmth of Nat’s back pressed to his as they were slowly encircled by the hellhounds. His world narrowed to that - the shield, the gun, the monster in front of him. When the gun opened, the magazine empty, another mag appeared over his shoulder, tossed by Natasha as she reloaded her own weapon. It had been a long time since he had fought like this - back to back, gun in hand, outnumbered and blind. 

 

_ It had been 70-some-odd years since he had fought like this _ , a voice corrected.  _ He’d learned to fight like this with Bucky at his back, in the middle of a war neither of them were supposed to survive.  _

 

There was a short break as one wave of beasts died and another charged. Cap reloaded, grimaced, and spoke into his mic. “Barton? How’s it looking?”

 

The silence on the other side told him enough. Then, through a crackle of static, he replied. “Not great. Tony’s caught playing defense on Thor’s six, and Loki’s doing his best to make it harder for you. I’d be willing to bet that half the hounds you’ve killed were his illusions.”

 

“We’ve dealt with worse,” Nat muttered. 

 

Tony chuckled dryly. “I don’t think we have.” 

 

“What’re our options?”

 

There was a silence as Barton considered, punctured only by gunfire and blasts of Stark’s weapons. “You can’t retreat,” he said quietly. “They’re between you and the gate, and Loki could just magic them in. You can’t fight them all off from the ground. You’re being overwhelmed already.” 

 

“I’m not overwhelmed until I’m dead,” Nat snapped. 

 

“You will be soon enough, if we don’t do something,” Tony shot back. 

 

“Everyone! Focus.” Cap punctuated his sentence by emptying his gun into the throat of a hellhound. “Barton. Options.”

 

“I could go to the roof, try to shoot at them from here.”

 

“You’re hurt,” Nat interjected. “You’re not going to get as clean a shot, and you’d be shooting at us, too. It’s not an option, Cap.” 

 

“It’s the only option,” Barton corrected. 

 

Steve sighed, punching a hellhound in the snout with two solid inches of vibranium. “Who  _ could _ make the shot?” 

 

“The Winter Soldier.” There was finality in her voice. 

 

“ _ That _ ,” Stark chimed in, “is the worst idea we’ve had today.” 

 

“You got a better one?” Nat asked. 

 

“Unfortunately, no. It’s crazy ex-boyfriend time.” Given their dire straits, Tony sounded downright chipper. 

 

“There a reason you’re happy about this?” Barton voiced the question.

 

“Well, I missed the original shoot-out. Figured it was time I get in on the fun.” 

 

Seconds after he finished speaking, one of Stark’s missiles blew another few hellhounds - and another few illusions - to dust. 

 

Captain America took a deep breath. “Get him on the comm,” he ordered. 

 

“Cap…”

 

“Do it now!”

 

Barton took a deep breath. “On it. Barnes? Can you hear me?”

 

“What’s going on?”

 

“Buck, we’re under attack. Outnumbered, out gunned, all the good stuff. Barton’s outta commission.” 

 

“Thanks for that,” Clint muttered. 

 

When he answered, Bucky’s voice was nothing but calm. “Right. What do you need me for?”

 

“Cover us. Barton, go get him, arm him, bring him to the roof. Stark, can you disable the charges on his arm?”

 

“You gotta be shitting me, Cap.” 

 

Nat interrupted before Steve could. “Just do it, Stark. Unless you’ve got a better option.” 

 

There was a beat of silence. “Done.” 

 

“Good. Bucky, I’m trusting you.” 

 

“I know, Stevie.” 

 

Before he could reply, a hellhound leapt for his throat. With a barked curse, the Captain warded it off, knocking down a few other beasts who had taken to the same idea. Suddenly, something new occurred to him. He had been so used to keeping track of his smaller team that he had forgotten who they were fighting. 

 

“Does anyone have eyes on Thor?”

 

Behind him, Natasha shook her head. “Haven’t seen him since I left the building.” 

 

Overhead, Tony echoed her sentiment. “Him and Loki both. I can see where they are, right below me. But it’s all magic smoke and lighting down there. I don’t think I could get anywhere near them.” 

 

Steve sighed. “Barton?”

 

“Negative, Cap, I’m in the armory with Barnes.” 

 

“Ok. Keep an eye out, please.”   

 

“You got it, Cap.”

 

He fought on blindly, falling into a rhythm once again, until, as if by magic, a hellhound melted away in front of his eyes. And then another followed, and another. One by one, the clump that had been threatening to overwhelm him and Nat turned into so much dust and poison in the wind. Steve sucked in a deep breath, lowering his gun for the first time in what felt like hours. Maybe thirty yards away from where they were catching their breath, another clump of hellhounds was forming, the last group on the field. There were a rough ten of them, and Nat was slowing down, injuries from New York and D.C. all building up. She would never admit it, just like Steve would never allow it to endanger her. 

 

“Bucky?”

 

“Here, Captain.” 

 

“Cover my six.” Before anyone could stop him, he tightened the straps of his shield, reloaded his gun, and plunged back into battle. 

 

**

 

Captain America was untouchable. Nothing got close enough to so much as scratch its fangs or claws against his shield. Bucky made sure of that. 

 

He might not be able to fight alongside Steve, at least at the moment, but he sure as hell could prove his worth.  _ Cover my six _ , Steve had told him. So that was what Bucky would do. Each monster that rose up behind him found itself with a pelt full of bullets. Anything that Steve knocked down was dead or dying before it could think about getting up. And just as quickly as they had swarmed, the hellhounds died, until it was just Steve and Nat, standing in a field of mud and strange black blood and the dust the monsters turned to as they died. 

 

Bucky smiled, even as he watched through the scope of his rifle. Behind him, Clint offered a low whistle. 

 

“Nat was right. You’re a damn good shot.” 

 

He nodded his acknowledgment. “I always was,” Bucky replied. “Even before… all this.”

 

“This was your job, wasn’t it?”

 

“What?”

 

“Watching his back. Covering him. Making sure he could survive running blind into danger.” 

 

Bucky shrugged again. “Someone has to do it, else he’s going to get himself killed.” 

 

Below them, Tony was touching down in the dirt. Cap coughed lightly. “I’m 95, not deaf,” he muttered into his comm. “I  _ can _ hear you.” 

 

Bucky smiled softly. “Sorry, Cap. Go back to what you were doing.” 

 

Clint squinted down at the three figures on the other side of the gates, and then at the puff of green smoke that had enveloped Loki and Thor. “I think you have bigger problems than us, Cap.”

 

“Shit. Cover us, Buck. Barton, you’re our eyes.” 

 

Nodding, and pulling a pair of binoculars from a bag near his feet, Barton voiced his assent. 

 

“We got you,” Bucky added. 

 

“Right. Romanoff, Stark, on me. Let’s get this son of a bitch, once and for all.” 

 

Nat offered nothing but a nod; Stark, loquacious as always, opened his mouth to make a snarky remark, and thought better of it. “Right,” he opted for instead. “Let’s do this thing, people.” 

 

Together, the three of them walked forward. And as they strode forward (an impressive picture, Bucky noticed, a good show of power, three of Earth’s mightiest heroes, framed together, plunging courageously into the green fog of unknown magic), Thor went flying, shrouded in a wreath of lightning that almost made it look intentional.

 

Almost, that is, because any flicker of doubt that it wasn’t Loki who had sent him flying was dispelled completely when Thor plowed into the roof of the base, a mere twenty feet from where Clint and Bucky were watching.

 

Mjolnir crashed to Earth at their feet.

 

Slowly, carefully, Bucky picked his way across the cracks in the cement, and scooped up the weapon. 

 

“Jesus,” he muttered, “what are they feeding this guy?” Aloud, he shouted, “Thor? You alright?” Turning, Mjolnir in hand, he walked towards the fallen Asgardian. 

 

(Behind him, Barton was frantically murmuring updates to the rest of the team, now desperately engaging Loki. “He has the hammer!” 

 

“I should hope so, it’s his hammer,” Nat sniped back. 

 

“No,  _ Barnes has the hammer!  _ The Winter Soldier _ picked up  _ the fucking  _ hammer _ !”)


	5. Chapter 5:

The battle ended quickly enough, with four Avengers facing just one Loki. This time, they made sure, he had no way to escape.

Within twenty minutes of Barton’s frantic transmission, they were all seated around a long conference table, Loki locked in a cell, and the Tesseract locked in a vault on the other side of the compound. Only then, clutching cups of lukewarm coffee and nibbling on whatever mismatched snacks Clint had decided to haul from distant kitchen, did they begin to relax.

As Tony so aptly remarked, no war council was complete without snacks. 

The pursuit of Loki and his upcoming Asgardian justice had been covered. Without SHIELD, they had no way to make him serve for his crimes on Earth. There was a brief silence, before Stark, predictably, brought up the question bothering all of them. 

“So is no one going to mention,” he asked the group, “the fact that The Winter Soldier is worthy of Thor’s hammer?”

Bucky, seated next to and a little behind Cap, frowned. “Is there something special about it?”

 

“Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” Thor himself recited the engraving as he hauled the hammer up onto the table. “Go ahead, lift it,” he offered, gesturing to his left, where Nat and Clint were seated. 

Warily, Natasha leaned forward, slipped her arm through the leather strap, and tugged. The hammer didn’t move. 

Clint, rolling his eyes, reached for it, his hand joining Nat’s on the handle. Together, they pulled, and still, the hammer didn’t move. 

“Ok, so, we get it,” Stark drawled. “You have to be worthy. How the hell, no offence, did your assassin boyfriend become worthy?” The question was directed at Steve, even if he was looking at Bucky. 

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

“I don’t know either,” Steve added. “But it seems like pretty decent proof that he’s not a HYDRA agent, doesn’t it?

“I guess we can scratch cognitive recalibration,” Stark murmured. 

“We’ll call the hammer Plan D, and successful,” Barton replied. 

With a few more disgruntled comments from Stark - and a few more sarcastic rejoiners from the Romanoff-Barton corner of the table - the meeting adjourned. Thor would stay the night, and take Loki home in the morning. Tony was sulking back to his lab. Nat insisted she check Barton’s wound, and Bucky trailed awkwardly after them to the med bay, muttering apologies. Which left Steve, alone in the conference room. With a heavy sigh, he scooped up his helmet and shield, and went to take a shower. 

It had been four days since they had heard from Fury. 

***

Bucky was sitting on the end of his bed when Steve emerged from the shower. He jumped, nearly dropping the towel still in his hands, but he still smiled softly as he bustled around the room. 

“Hell of a day, huh?” Steve offered in greeting. This was the way they had always been. There was no preamble. They simply talked. When Bucky had appeared in Steve’s tent each night in the 40s, this was how each conversation would start. On the front, it was always one hell of a day. 

Neither of them saw a reason this pattern should change. 

Bucky met his smile. “Hell of a day.” 

Carefully, gingerly, Steve sat down on the bed next to him, noticing two things. One, Bucky had put himself on the farthest corner of the bed - facing his prosthetic to the room, not next to Steve. And two, his human hand was clutching a very familiar, very battered, compass. 

“I cannot believe you still have this thing,” he murmured. 

Steve chuckled, suddenly a little self conscious. “The ice uh, the ice caused a little water damage to Peg, but the photo underneath came through just fine.” 

“I saw,” Bucky replied. Somehow, that was significant. He had seen. He had felt comfortable enough, in Cap’s space, in Steve’s space, to go looking for the compass. 

“You know, I was thinking, maybe it’s time to frame Peggy’s photo, just keep the real one in there.”

Bucky’s smiled flashed. “Only if you’ve got a photo of you in that old, stupid uniform for me to carry around with me. I lost mine in… in the fall.” 

Steve’s own smile faltered. They would have to talk about that soon, he knew. But not tonight. Not with Bucky alive and smiling and sitting next to him like no time had passed at all. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised, smile back in place as he wrapped an arm over Bucky’s shoulders. The smile only grew when Bucky leaned against him.

For a minute, just a brief minute, Steve was on the end of a bed in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn. He had been smaller then - they both were, but Steve had grown more - and none of this had happened yet. No Erskine, no Zola, no train, no metal arm, no ice. 

Just two stupid boys who were maybe a little bit in love. 

Bucky sighed, and Steve knew he was thinking the same thing. 

Neither of them said anything. They didn’t need to. Instead, they sat that way for a long time, Steve’s arm over Bucky’s shoulders, Bucky’s around Steve’s waist, and they remembered, they lost themselves in the memories that had been too painful to look at for years. 

Remembering turned to reminiscing, and all the sudden it was two o’clock in the morning and they were trying to remember the color of Steve’s childhood living room. 

“Wasn’t it kinda purple-y?” Bucky suggested. 

“Oh yeah, you’re right, it was the dusty purple Ma loved so much. It was her favorite room, with the way…”

“The way the sun came in through the little window, yeah.’ 

They were lying on their backs, arms still tangled together, in the middle of the bed. Middle is a generous assessment, actually, because the bed was hardly big enough for two enhanced super-soldiers to fit side by side. They managed anyway. 

“Ah, I miss your ma,” Bucky said. “She was the best.” 

“Course you do, you were always her favorite son,” Steve shot back with a little smile. 

“Yeah, ‘cause she didn’t have to feed me or pay for me. I was the bonus kid who kept you outta trouble.”

Steve flipped onto his side, laughing. “Kept me out of trouble? Buck, you got me into more trouble than you got me out of.” 

“That’s so untrue,” he answered easily, rolling to face Steve. “I saved your ass more times than either of us can count, and you know it.” 

Steve offered a small smile. “That’s a complete lie,” he murmured. 

“Punk.” 

“Jerk.” 

And neither of them had planned on it (too soon, and he wouldn’t want to scare Stevie away, Bucky would have said. Too soon, to raw, too much I don't know if he remembers, Steve would have told anyone who asked), and neither of them could say for sure who started it (he did, they each would have said of the other, if anyone had been willing to ask them), but before Bucky could summon the perfect sarcastic response, they were kissing. 

And it was like the last seventy years had never happened, like they had never been apart. It was slow, it was gentle, it was like coming home after you’ve been away for a long trip you didn’t really enjoy. Steve’s hand was flat between Bucky’s shoulder blades, his other hand snaking up into his hair. (And maybe he could get used to Bucky with long hair, he thought). Bucky’s arms were tight around his waist, (arms, plural, Steve noted distantly, with what would have been a smile, if his mouth hadn’t been otherwise occupied), hands gripping Steve’s hips. 

They broke apart slowly, in a flurry of smaller kisses, with the widest grins either of them had worn in decades. 

Once again, Bucky was thrown back in time, picturing them laying in a different part of New York, wrapped up in each other in almost the exact same position, eighty years past - the first summer they had been together. 

Steve kissed him again, gently. As he leaned forward, closing the gap between them, his shirt shifted, tangling on the sheets. And the ring of bruises on his neck became all the more obvious. 

Carefully, Bucky raised his real hand, his human hand, to touch the edge of the largest, darkest bruise. “Stevie,” he whispered.

“It wasn’t you, Buck.”

He was silent for a moment, and Steve could tell he was trying hard not to cry. He’d only seen Bucky cry a few times in their lives, and each time, Steve had sworn it was something he never wanted to see again. “It was my hand,” he said finally. “I watched it happen, and I couldn’t stop it.” 

“It’s ok, Buck. Really.” 

“But it’s not,” he replied, and now there was something like anger in his voice. Bucky shoved himself upright, scrubbing a hand down his face. “It’s not alright,” he repeated. “I hunted you, I hurt you, I nearly killed you, and you would have let me.” And now that was real anger, and he was nearly shouting as he looked down at Steve. 

Steve sat up slowly, leaned against the headboard, and reached for Bucky’s hand. “I would have,” he answered. 

“Why?” Only now did Bucky’s voice waver. 

“I trusted that you wouldn’t kill me, I knew Nat was close enough to save my ass if I was wrong, and most importantly, like I told you, I don’t want to live in a world where you’re alive and don’t know who I am.” His voice broke, partway through the last bit of his little speech, and now it was Steve who looked like he was about to cry. 

Bucky brushed this thumb over Stevie’s knuckles, planting a gentle kiss on the back of his hand. “Well, let’s be glad it didn’t come to that.”

Steve smiled. “And let’s be glad that Nat didn’t hesitate to knock you on your ass.” He raised his free hand to Bucky’s arm, trailing his fingers over the half dozen bruises and cuts that littered Bucky’s skin. “You’re just as beat up as I am, Buck.” 

He shrugged, a tiny smile playing on his lips. For the moment, the anger, the fear, is gone from his face. “I think I about deserved it.” 

And when Steve says, “You didn’t,” there’s too much weight in his words for either of them to untangle. So instead, Bucky rubs his thumb across Steve’s hand again, and he smiles.

“You know you’re not going to sleep tonight, right?” 

Steve blinked, taken aback by the sudden detour in conversation, paused by the lightness in Bucky’s voice. “Probably not.” 

Steve had forgotten how well Bucky could read him, Bucky could tell by the tiny flash of surprise he let slip. But this was Stevie, with all his little anxieties and Bucky knew that after a fight like the one he’d had today, Steve wouldn’t be able to sleep. “It used to take you days to calm down from a mission,” he continued, almost absentmindedly. “I can’t imagine your cool-down is any faster after fighting an army of ungodly beasts.” When he says the last two words, he pitches his voice to mimic Thor’s baritone, and Steve smiles. 

“Probably not,” he admits again.   
Bucky shifted so that he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing Steve. “So?”

Steve simply raised his eyebrows. 

With a smile, Bucky rolled his eyes. “Is it a talking night, a silent night, a sketching night? A distraction night?” That last part came with a knowing look that could only be described as a self-satisfied smirk. 

Steve whacked his shoulder with one hand. “Ow.”

With a knowing nod, Bucky said, “Metal shoulder, too.” 

“Ugh.” He was smiling, though. “You remember.”

“Course I do, Stevie. I’m still me.” He glanced at his arm, and wiggled metal fingers in the space between them. “Mostly.” 

“You want to stay here tonight?”

Bucky raised a single eyebrow. “Am I allowed to? HYDRA agent and all?”

“I think you’ve proved yourself. And your SHIELD status currently outranks my own, so it’s not like I can order you into a cell.” 

“Yeah, but Stevie, I don’t have to stay here.” 

“I didn’t say you had to, I asked if you wanted to, jerk.”

Bucky smiled. “Punk. ‘Course I do. You know that.” He turned to settle against the headboard, tossing pillows aside as he went. “You have too many of these damn things,” he muttered. 

Steve laughed. “It’s not like I was planning on having a guest,” he shot back. Slowly, with a groan, he stood, picking the long-forgotten compass off the blanket and setting it on the dresser. Steve stretched, arms above his head as he tried to work the kink out of his left shoulder, but he didn’t miss the way Bucky’s eyes dipped to the strip of stomach left exposed when his shirt rode up. 

“Point taken.” Bucky has leaned back fully now, legs spreading across the bedspread, arms unfurling over the truly ungodly number of pillows piled on the bed. “C’mere,” Bucky mutters, and with a smile, Steve obliges. 

He seats himself between Bucky’s legs, leaning back against his chest. Carefully, the metal arm wraps around his waist, and Bucky’s human hand finds his own. “Is this ok?” Bucky asked quietly, his chin resting on Steve’s shoulder. 

“Better than ok, Buck,” he replied, lacing his fingers with Bucky’s metal ones. “Perfect.” 

He can’t see the smile spreading across Bucky’s face, but he can feel the edges of it where Bucky has nuzzled into his neck, and it makes Steve’s grin grow all the wider. 

They stay that way for a long while, probably hours, although he can’t see a clock, and it’s long enough that Bucky, who has never quite had the same post-battle jitters that his Steve gets, is beginning to doze in Steve’s warmth, when something changes in Steve’s posture. 

“You alright, punk?” His question is mumbled, sleepy, and rough at the edges. And at any other moment, it would melt Steve’s gay little heart to hear his voice like that. 

Steve isn’t awake to hear it. 

Because while Bucky had been dozing, he had fallen asleep. Which neither of them had expected. Usually, that was a good thing - he needed whatever sleep he could get. 

But now, and now Bucky had woken up enough to recognize it, he was having a nightmare. A bad one, judging by his muttering. 

Steve never talked in his sleep unless it was a really bad nightmare. The only word that Bucky could make out was his own name, mumbled over and over again like a prayer.

“Stevie, Stevie, come back to me, baby, c’mon, Stevie.” His voice was gentle, his words honed by a hundred hours of practice, by thousands of nights of fitful sleep. Gently, he rocked Steve back and forth, trying to wake him without startling him. They were not, Bucky decided, in a good position for a nightmare. Sure, it had been cute when Stevie had cuddled up to him like the old days, but now there was a couple hundred pounds of dreaming super-soldier in his lap, and Bucky was effectively pinned. “C’mon, Stevie, wake up, please, it’s all ok, I’m here, Stevie, c’mon baby.”

“Buck?” His voice was heavy, groggy, and absolutely terrified. 

“Mmmhmm, right here.”

Steve sat up, so fast that Bucky nearly fell over sideways. His movements were sharp as he scrambled off the bed, backing away as quickly as he could. “How… h-how are you here?”

“Take a breath, Stevie.” Internally, Bucky frowned. Sometimes his nightmares were like this - they left him confused, disoriented. But it had been years since he had had one like this. As far as you know, an invasive voice whispered in the back left corner of Bucky’s mind. You’ve been gone since before he woke up, you have no idea what you’ve missed.

Across the room, backed up against the dresser, he complied. 

“Another deep breath,” Bucky ordered. 

Again, he inhaled. 

“What’d you dream, Stevie?”

“You fell. Again.” Something cleared in his expression as they spoke. 

Bucky stood slowly, trying not to frighten him. “You back?”

Steve took another deep breath. “I’m back.” 

“Ok.” Bucky stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “C’mere,” he muttered, tugging Steve into a tight hug. 

“Sorry,” came the whisper. 

“S’alright, punk,” he whispered back. “You wanna go back to bed?”

Steve sighed, pulling back a bit. “What time is it?” He glanced at the clock by his bed. “4:30. Good enough.”

“God, please don't tell me you still get up at this hour.”

Steve looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re a lost cause,” Bucky declared dramatically, flopping back onto the bed. “Ungodly hour of the morning” he muttered, tugging a pillow towards his head and half closing his eyes.

Steve smiled. “At least I slept,” he offered. The Look Bucky gave him suggested that was a patch of very thin ice to take as moral high ground. 

“I didn’t,” Bucky groaned. 

“Well, whose fault is that?” Steve had his back turned, changing his shirt, and Bucky was suddenly far more awake than he had been a minute ago. 

“Yours,” he said. “For being so damn pretty.” 

Steve laughed, tugging a clean shirt over his head. “Speak of which, you gonna stop staring at me any time soon?”

“It’s been three quarters of a century since I saw you naked, Stevie, gimme a break.” 

He could tell from the beat of silence that he still could, in fact, make Captain America blush. 

“Shut it,” came the reply, only a few seconds too late to be sincere. When he turned to face the room - and Bucky - there was still the faintest tinges of a blush on Steve’s face. Bucky took great delight in pointing that out. 

Steve just smiled at him. Bucky knew that smile, and he knew that, whether it be a day or a week from now, Steve would get him back. He decided that it was worth it. “You gonna kiss me goodbye before you go for your run, or am I expected to drag my ass out of bed and go with you?” 

“You gotta get your face out of my pillow for me to kiss you, Buck.” 

It was with an overly dramatic sigh that Bucky complied, propping himself up on one elbow. Steve leaned down to kiss him, just a gentle peck, and Bucky allowed himself another lazy smile as he twined his finger through regulation-perfect blond hair, deepening the kiss. Smiling, still smiling, Steve pulled away. 

“I’ll be back in an hour, training at 6:30.” 

“You have to go and spoil a perfectly good kiss with training.”

“I’m letting you sleep in! You should be nice to me.” 

“When have I ever? Besides, don’t I outrank you now?”

“Never. I’m goddamn Captain America. You sure you don’t wanna go for a run?”

“Nope.” 

“Nope you’re not sure?”

“Punk.”

“Jerk.” 

Bucky rolled his eyes as he fell back on the bed. “Give me five minues, I’ll come running with you.” He dragged himself to his feet again, and then seemed to come to a realization. “You got any clothes I can borrow?”

***

An hour later, Nat emerged from the compound, already dressed to spar. She found them jogging (and by jogging, she meant superhuman jogging, which was roughly the average person’s medium running pace) around the fence line on a cool-down lap, bickering indistinctly, hands brushing only occasionally as they ran slightly-too-close to each other. 

She owed Clint the ten she’d made off Stark. They definitely weren’t exes. 

In fact, was that Cap’s shirt that Barnes was wearing? That explained why JARVIS hadn’t logged any movement in any unoccupied rooms. She smiled, just a little. In spite of herself, she was coming to like Barnes. (Almost in reply to her errant thought, the scar on her hip twinged. Idly, she rubbed it, still watching the couple approach. She wouldn’t, she decided, hold that against him. One free pass, so to speak). 

“Lovebirds!” Nat called out, when she knew they were close enough to hear her. 

“Very funny!” Cap shouted back. He did not sound amused. 

Barnes, though, was hiding a smile. Lovebirds, indeed. 

“Barton’s making breakfast. If you’re not there in twenty minutes, I’m going to eat your share. We’re training at 7, Thor’s lifting off at quarter ‘til.” 

Cap was close enough now to speak at a normal level. “Thanks, Nat.” Barnes was quick to echo him, although he called her “agent.” 

(She really did remind him of Peggy.) 

She disappeared back into the building, the two soldiers close behind her. When they swung a left to the living quarters, though, she headed down, down and to the right, to track down the kitchens. Just because Barton was a good cook, and he was, doesn’t mean she trusted him with her breakfast. With her life? Sure, she trusted him over nearly anyone else alive. Not with her toast, though. 

He always burnt the toast.


	6. Chapter 6

Breakfast was quiet, but companionably so. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Tony didn’t deign to show up. So Nat and Clint, who had decided they could all fit around the tiny folding table she had dragged out of some god-forsaken closet and set up in the corner of the spacious kitchen, served a shockingly delicious breakfast to Steve and Bucky (properly threatened, they showed up exactly on time), and Thor (whose knees did not fit under the table, but who made a valiant effort at not knocking the whole thing over anyway). 

 

Between two super-soldiers, a god, and a pair of assassins, the toast (beautifully golden brown, after Clint scorched the first batch completely to death) disappeared quickly. Along with the eggs, the sausage, the bacon, and the last of the orange juice. Steve frowned as he cleared away dishes. 

 

“We’re going to have to make a grocery run soon.”

 

It was such a domestic thing to say that Barton nearly choked on the bite of food he had stolen off Nat’s unguarded plate. “Sure, that’ll be easy. Hi, yes, I’d like to buy enough food for me and all the Avengers, but we’re not really here, we’re hiding out upstate, so we’re incognito. Have a  _ lovely _ day.” His voice dripped with sarcasm as he imitated conversation. 

 

“Very funny,” Nat drawled. “I’ll take one of the Jeeps from the garage this afternoon. Barton and I are the least conspicuous, anyway.” Pointedly, she glanced from Thor’s hammer, propped up in the doorway, to Steve’s wide shoulders and regulation haircut, to Bucky’s metal arm. The others simply shrugged in response. She wasn’t wrong. 

 

Thor stood up, smiling broadly. “Well, this has been fun,” he began, “But I should really get my- I mean, Loki, and go. I’d like to be crossing back into Asgard as the sun rises there.”

 

“For dramatic effect? Or..?”

 

He chuckled again, this time in Barton’s direction. “Changing of the guard. Makes it  _ far _ easier to get to the prisons. All the gates are rising anyway.” 

 

“Makes sense to me,” Nat said. “Let’s get Loki and get you guys on the road.” 

 

“JARVIS?” 

 

“Yes, Captain?”   
  


“Could you let How- Could you let Tony know that Thor’s getting ready to leave?”

 

“I’m assuming you wouldn’t like me to inform him of that little slip?” 

 

_ Only Tony Stark _ , Steve mused, just a tad irritated,  _ would build sarcasm into his robots.  _ “That’d be grand,” he shot back.

 

“So that’s why you only ever call him Stark,” Bucky muttered. Steve elbowed him in the ribs. 

 

“Thor, why don’t you and I take a stroll down to the dungeons,” Nat was saying. “Barton, you wanna grab the Tesseract for them? I don’t think it’s a great plan for it and Loki to be together until it’s time to go.” 

 

Both nodded their assent, and Steve got up with them. “Might as well offer a little extra help with Loki,” he offered. 

 

“What, like I couldn’t take him?” Nat’s grin was as easy as her words. 

 

“Never hurts to have help,” Steve replied, with a small smile of his own. 

 

She nodded, and the three of them rounded a corner and disappeared. For a moment, Barton and Bucky were alone. 

 

“Walk with me,” Clint offered. 

 

And so he did. 

 

“I feel bad for you,” Clint said as they turned towards the vault. 

 

“I didn’t ask you to.” 

 

“I know. When Loki invaded, before New York - did you know about that?”

 

“Steve filled me in.”

 

“Gotcha. When Loki invaded, he put me into… well, Nat called it mind control, and I didn’t really correct her, but… I was aware of what I was doing. Who I was hurting. At the time. But then she knocked me out, and I came back and I had  _ nothing _ .”

 

“She’s quite good at that,” Bucky offered. 

 

Clint nodded, smiling. “She is. I woke up in a bed on the helicarrier with  _ no idea _ what I had done. No idea how many of my own agents I’d… Well, better to not get into that. Point is, Nat went through something similar. Russian Red Rooms. And I’m still recovering from New York. Plus,  _ someone _ put a bullet through my arm.” 

 

Bucky winced. “Sorry again about that.”

 

“It’s fine.” He shrugged. “I can’t even count the number of times Nat’s nearly killed me, and I don’t hold it against her. Point is, we understand. And I’m laid up for the moment, which means I’ve got plenty of time to talk.” 

 

They paused. They’d reached the vault door, massive and steel and locked with, he was sure, more than the half dozen security measures than Bucky could see. He offered a small smile. “Thanks, Barton.” 

 

“Welcome to the team, Barnes.” They shared a smile for a brief moment, and then Clint reached past him to tap on a keypad. “Ow,” he muttered, completely shamelessly. 

 

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Thought you weren’t holding it against me?”

 

Clint, ignoring him, opened the rest of the increasingly complicated locks. “You don’t have clearance to get in,” he told Bucky. “We haven’t gotten around to re-establishing all the security passes you should have by Carter’s orders. I’ll work on that later.” He hovered awkwardly for a second, and then Bucky waved at him. 

 

“Relax. A couple days ago, I wasn’t exactly good guy material. Go ahead, get the scary blue cube. I’m gonna go take a nap.” 

 

“Long night?” 

 

Bucky turned, already walking back the way they had come. “That, and the star-spangled idiot insists on getting up at 4:30 in the goddamn morning.” 

 

Clint’s muffled laughter was only cut off when the vault door clicked shut behind him. Bucky smiled all the way back to the room he was already starting to think of as  _ theirs _ . 

 

***

“Buck.” 

 

“Nope.” 

 

“The Asgardians are gone.” 

 

“What time…?”

 

“7, ish. I came up for you earlier, but you looked so peaceful that I let you be.” 

 

Bucky stirred in the mountain of pillows, moving to sit cross-legged next to Steve, who was seated on the edge of the bed. “You should have woken me.” 

 

He shrugged. “Well, I’m waking you now.” 

 

“Smartass.” 

 

Steve didn’t bother to validate him with a response. Instead, he bounced off the edge of the bed, already scouring the room. “Hey, Buck, have you seen my…?”

 

“Shield? Next to the door, leaning against the dresser.” 

 

Steve walked a few paces, to a point where he could see past the blind corner. And there it was, leaning as Bucky had said. “Thank you. And my…?”   
  


“Sneakers are at the bottom of the closet. Gym bag is in the top, boyfriend is asleep in the bed.” 

 

How he managed to know Steve’s space better than Steve himself after half a day, Steve had no idea. But the thought passed quickly as he processed what Bucky had said. Steve smiled, even as the word rolled through the air between them. It was strange, but not bad. “Boyfriend?”

 

Still seated, Bucky shrugged. “I couldn’t tell anyone you were mine all those years ago, Stevie, and it killed me, you know it did. I don’t want to make the same mistake again. So yeah. If you want me, that is.” 

 

“Why wouldn’t I, Buck?” There was something choked in his voice as his shield dropped, as he sat back on the edge of the bed, taking both of Bucky’s hands in his own. 

 

“Reforming HYDRA agent? Semi-stable nearly-hundred-year-old man? I dunno, Stevie, maybe you’re sick ‘a me by now.” 

 

Like it always did when he was upset, or stressed, or emotional, the Brooklyn was creeping back into his words, heavier by the syllable. Steve smiled. “Never. Til the end of the line, right?” 

 

“End of the line.” 

 

And then Steve kissed him, and it was different than how they had kissed before. 

 

In the beginning, they had kissed sparingly, and every single one was terrifying because you never knew who might see. Because each kiss put them in danger. When they had grown up a little bit, had an apartment of their own, their kisses were a closely guarded secret - only when they were alone, and always a little rushed with fear. And then in the Army, where they never dared to more than brush lips, no matter how many nights Bucky stayed in Stevie’s tent without a single comment from anyone. 

 

The kisses they had shared the night before had been gentle, careful. Neither of them wanting to press too far or ask for too much. 

 

This kiss was not like that. This kiss was needy. The force of it toppled them over, and instead of laughing and pushing them upright, Steve pushed Bucky deeper into the bed. This kiss was out of breath in seconds, was desperate and sweeping and left them both with swollen lips and messy hair. This was the kind of kiss that led to something, the kind of kiss that meant they weren’t planning on leaving the bed any time soon. 

 

“Stevie,” Bucky managed to say, although it was hard to form a single coherent word with his lips that close. But he did it anyway. Bucky Barnes had always been a man of impossible odds. 

 

Steve cut him off. “I know that voice and I hate that voice,” he murmured, pulling them together again. 

 

“Training.” 

 

With a sigh, Steve rolled to one side, snuggling into Bucky’s shoulder. “You had to go and ruin a perfectly good kiss with  _ training _ .” 

 

“You did it first, punk.” 

 

“Jerk.” At this point, it was reflexive to answer with the insult. It made them both smile.

Bucky kissed his forehead gently. “We’ve got all the time in the world, Stevie.” 

 

“I know, Buck.” 

 

“Time to go be goddamn Captain America,” he said. 

 

Steve stood, groaning. “I hate that,” he muttered. 

 

“You look good in the uniform if it’s any consolation.”

 

“From you? Always.” 

 

Standing now, too, Bucky grabbed the discarded shield. “C’mon, Cap. I want to see if I can last more than twenty seconds against Romanoff this time.” 

 

With an indulgent smile, Steve followed him from the room. This, he thought, would be continued later. But Bucky was right. They were here, they were alive, and they had all the time in the world. 

 

***

She had brought this upon herself, she knew. It didn’t make her any happier about it. 

 

Nat sighed, gritted her teeth, and sprung lightly from where she was crouched behind a low barrier, shooting blanks at the shield set against her. She had Cap pinned, and she smiled with satisfaction.  _ Wait. shit.  _ She had Cap. 

 

_ Where the hell is Barnes? _

 

And then he was behind her, tossing her own discarded knife through the space where her head had been seconds before, and they were a tangle of black clothing and traded blows at the pace only assassins of their caliber could keep. 

 

Cap, on the other side of the room, smiled. Bucky was holding his own, but he was slowing down. Nat hadn’t noticed yet, but she would. He popped up, tossing the shield like a giant frisbee, and his aim was true. Bucky caught it, flipped it, and, within seconds, had Nat pinned to the ground, vibranium edge pressed against her throat. 

 

She smiled. “Good game.” 

 

Bucky offered his hand, and the fierceness, the near predatory edge his expression had adopted during their fight, melted away. “Good game,” he replied, smiling. 

Cap, coming up behind the pair, smiled as well. “I thought you nearly had us a couple times, Romanoff.” 

 

“I thought I did too, old man,” she tossed back. 

 

Clint was sitting in a folding chair in the corner of the room. He had his legs propped up on a stack of gearboxes, and his arms crossed behind his head. For all the world, he looked asleep. He laughed as Nat sprang to her feet. “You’re the best, Nat, you know that. But these two give you a run for your money.” 

 

She cursed him in Russian, but she was nodding too. “You fight…”

 

“Interchangeably?” Clint offered. 

 

“I was gonna say like one mind in two bodies, but yeah, interchangeably works too,” she agreed. 

 

Bucky and Steve exchanged glances. “Interchangeably?” Bucky asked. 

 

“Sure. When you fight together, you fight like you know exactly where Steve’s gonna be and where the shield is and what he’s about to do, without even looking at him.” 

 

“But I do know,” Bucky protested.

 

Steve smiled. “Buck taught me to fight. So he knows every tell, every stupid thing I do and every little thing I do well. And I know all that about him. You gotta remember, we’ve done this before.” 

 

“Clearly,” Nat drawled. 

 

Barton opened his mouth, but whatever comment he was going to make was cut off by a shower of static from the PA system. 

 

“This thing on?” 

 

“Yes, Sir, you’re broadcasting,” came the reply, in JARVIS’ calm voice. 

 

“Alrighty, kiddos, you’re in for a treat.”

 

Nat glanced up at the ceiling. “You ready for us, Stark?”

 

They could almost hear him roll his eyes. “That’s why I’m calling you, isn’t it?”

 

“Give us five,” Nat ordered. With a soft click, the PA system shut off. 

 

Steve looked at her. “What’s going on?”

 

“Stark has presents for us, apparently.”

 

“Should I be scared?” Barton walked over to join them, looking anything but. 

 

“Let’s find out.” Steve turned to the door. And then he looked back at Nat. “Do you know where  Stark’s lab is?”

 

***

 

It was eight minutes, actually, before they arrived, bickering goodnaturedly. And then another six of fanfare and peacocking before Stark was willing to show them the reasons he had dragged them all down here. 

 

Finally, with far too much drama, he tugged an oversized sheet off a low table, revealing… boxes? 

 

Nat crossed her arms. “What am I looking at?” 

 

“Presents! For Barton,” he slid a flat case across the table as he spoke, “New suit with extra armor since you insist on being shot at.” 

 

Clint elbowed Bucky in the ribs, and got a whispered, “sorry,” in response. 

 

Tony cleared his throat, waiting for them to finish. “And I made a few updates to your quiver. Romanoff!” Her box came flying across the polished glass surface, and she stopped it before it could fly off the edge. “Lots of hidden pockets, knives hidden in knee pads, belt buckle, and each wrist, six concealed holsters.” 

 

She grinned. “Somebody loves me,” she muttered. 

 

“Yeah. Me. For Miss America…” Tony paused to allow Bucky to laugh, smiling himself. “Was that good? I like that one, I thought that was good. Anyway. For you, a new suit, yours is torn half to hell. Magnetic connection for your shield on both forearms and back, concealed holster behind your shield on your back, and I took a few notes from future-you’s outfit.” He winked, and it was Nat’s turn to laugh. 

 

Behind them, Barton and Bucky exchanged confused looks. 

 

Steve took great pains to ignore the fact that he was probably, almost definitely, blushing. “Thank you, Tony.” 

 

“My pleasure. Had to do something with myself. Besides, I was almost done before we left New York. Annnnd last but not least, Barnes! Got somethin' for ya.” He shoved the last box forward. “The mechanics of your arm are mostly fine, although I’ve got a few software updates to upload at some point. New suit, in the box. Your last color scheme was terrible. So.” He drummed his fingers on his now-empty side of the table. The rest of the group was gathered on the opposite edge. 

 

“Thanks, Stark.” Bucky smiled. Around him, the others echoed his gratitude. 

 

He offered a rare, genuine, smile. In spite of himself, Tony had come to care about these idiots. So yeah, he had built them new suits, had altered the fabric of their old uniforms to protect them better. But it wasn’t like he was doing it because he  _ liked _ them. He needed them, plain and simple. Someone had to help him protect this god-forsaken planet, and they seemed up to the mark. 

 

Besides, he hadn’t been able to sleep since New York. Since the wormhole. 

 

His anxiety was back, the shortness of breath and jittery fear that had consumed him after the cave, and it was threatening to eat him alive. 

 

So he had made the team new suits. To pass the time. 

 

Not because he wanted them, maybe even a little bit needed them, to survive and stick around. 

 

Not at all. 

 

***

“Future you?”

 

“Hmmm?”

 

They were seated on the floor of Steve’s room - the bed wasn’t quite large enough for the two of them to sit comfortably with their legs stretched out - and Bucky had just broken a long, but entirely comfortable - silence. 

 

“Stark said he took notes from future-you’s suit. What was that about?” 

 

“I told you about that, that it was maybe-me-from-the-future who told me you were alive.” 

 

“You didn’t say anything about his suit.” 

 

Steve took a deep breath. “That’s how we figured it out. Stark realized that, apparently, my ass looked better in the other guy’s suit than in mine.” 

 

Bucky wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t that. He wheezed out a laugh, nearly toppling over as he completely cracked up. When he regained his breath, and his balance, he managed to say, with a tiny feigned pout, “I like your ass.” 

 

There was nothing, he decided, more satisfying than making Steve blush. 

 

“Shut it,” Steve mumbled. 

 

Bucky bit his lip to stop from laughing again. “Sorry. Does that mean though that Stark  _ specifically designed _ your suit to make your ass look good?”

 

Steve just shrugged, picking up his drink and taking a sip. 

 

“Like father, like son,” Bucky mused. 

 

Steve almost choked on his water. 

 

***

Nat, surrounded by the glowing faces of half a dozen SHIELD agents, frowned. She flicked through file after file, trying to identify someone who would answer her, who could tell her something. 

 

An incoming call beeped insistently at her, and she tapped to answer it, her frown deepening. 

 

“Fury?”

 

“Romanoff.” 

 

“What’s going on? We haven’t heard from anyone since we left the city. Is everything ok?”

 

The image wavered, and his response was lost in a hailstorm of static. 

 

“Fury!” 

 

“D.C. Come back…. Headquarters….. Attack…. Do you copy me?”

 

“No, I don't! What’s happening?”

 

Fury looked at her, the connection clearing for long enough to make eye contact. “We’ll try to hold them,” he said. 

 

And then, in a shower of gunfire, the image went black. 

 

Nat swore aloud in rage. She screamed down the hall, “BARTON!” 

 

Within seconds, he was skidding through the open door. “What happened?”

 

“Get the helicopter. We’re going to D.C.” 

 

He didn’t question her. Clint nodded, already turning. “Good thing Stark finished the new suits.” 

 

***

Fifteen minutes later, the helicopter was prepping for flight, and Steve and Bucky emerged onto the helipad, squinting against the wind. Both were dressed for battle. 

 

Through the open door, Nat gestured for them to hurry up. Stark, sitting beside her, was talking to someone - either Pepper or JARVIS, Steve couldn’t tell from here. 

“You know, I think Stark was right,” Bucky muttered. “Your ass really does look better in this suit.” 

 

Steve rolled his eyes and reached for Bucky’s hand. 

 

They had no idea what they were facing in D.C., where they were going, or why. They had gotten Nat’s panicked message and, per her orders, suited up and shown up where they were told. Soldiers, both of them, to the bone. 

 

But they would be okay. 

 

Everything, they knew, would work out okay. 

 

They may have been flying blind into a firefight, but they were going into it hand in hand. 

 

Together. 

 

_ Until the end of the line. _

 

Steve wasn’t sure if he had said the words or just thought them, but Bucky squeezed his hand in response. 

 

“Till the end of the line,” Buck murmured back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well! That was a ride. I wrote this in basically a week, and the plan was not originally to upload it all at once, but I'm an impatient bitch and figured I might as well. 
> 
> I'm not sure if I want to continue to explore this little niche of alternate universe I've carved out and write about them in D.C., maybe helping rebuild SHIELD, meeting Sam, and finding out that Winter Soldier killed the Starks, or if I want to leave it here, as a semi-happy ending. I can say, though, that at 60 pages, this is the longest fic I've ever actually finished. 
> 
> Let me know in the comments what you thought, if you'd like to see more of this, and anything else you'd like to tell me! And leave kudos if you enjoyed reading it, because I know I had a ton of fun writing it. 
> 
> Thanks for making it this far, kiddos!
> 
> <3


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